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WAR: an Ode 

And Other Poems 



WAR: an Ode 

And Other Poems 



BY 

RONALD CAMPBELL MACFIE 




NEW YORK 

E. P. BUTTON AND COMPANY 
68i Fifth Avenue 



Copyright, 1920 
By E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 



All Rights Restrud 



Printed in tkt United Stofet of Ameriem 



MAY 20 1920 
iaA570050 



TO 

RUDYARD KIPLING 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 



War: an Ode ^ 

Other Poems 

A Quatercentenary Ode 55 

"Blue of Smoke" ^^ 

General Booth ^3 

A Flying Song ^5 

" In the White City of Thy Soul " 68 

To Sir William Watson 72 

Battle 73 

Six Fragments 74 

City of Granite Tower 7^ 

Eugeny ° 
In Memory of Major William La Touche 

Congreve, V.C. 82 

Wild Rose ^3 

"How Little Seem the Joy and Fears" 89 

Daring ^° 

Death, the Child 9i 

Wedding Ode 93 



vu 



PACK 



The Heart of a Child 


96 


Ode of Welcome to Queen Alexandra 


97 


Death's Lover 


99 


Homeland 


lOI 


In Memory of a Young Airman 


103 


The Resurrection of a Dream 


108 


The Blue Bird 


III 


To J. F. White (Art Critic) when Dying 


112 


Pan's Flute 


114 


The "Titanic" 


IIS 


An Extravaganza 


127 


The Nile 


129 


A Pastel 


132 


Ski Song 


133 


On the Death of John Davidson 


134 


Lady Moonlight 


138 


The Isle of Song 


139 


A Bee 


140 


A Hybrid 


141 


A Lie 


142 


But 


144 


"Integer Vita" 


14s 


Face Aflower 


146 



VIU 



A Word 


PAGB 

147 


Memory 


148 


To a Son on the Death of his Mother 


149 


Spring and Summer 


151 


To a Lady who Sent Verses to Correct 


154 


"I Have Found Her" 


15s 


A Miracle 


156 


To a Lady in the Reading-room of the British 




Museum 


157 


"Ex Unitate Vires" (Let us take Hands) 


164 


Girl of the Golden Voice 


168 


"Ampelopsis" (Virginian Creeper) 


169 


Moons 


170 


"I Called for Love" 


171 


In Memoriam: John Davidson 


172 


Queen Alexandra Day 


179 


"Because Unworthy" 


183 


Rewards 


184 


Dreams 


187 


Lilies 


189 


The Joy of Youth 


190 


Love's Death 


191 


Thought 


192 




is 



FAGS 

"Her Soul" 193 

A Blossom of Flowering Seas 194 

Love's Immortality 196 

Song 197 

Love's Youth 198 

"Is There no Hostel by the Way of Life?" 200 

A Sea Song 202 

Starry Eyes 203 

Compensations 204 

Light and Darkness 205 

Worship 206 

"The Husk of Life" 207 

Reckless 208 

Transformation 209 

Bound 210 

The Chapel 211 



WAR: an Ode 



War: An Ode 

PART I 



Spinning in space, a filmy cloudlet shone 

Festooned and frayed, 

Like a torn braid 

Of woven pearls and silver — thin and wan 

As tenuous ghosts that in the saf^fron dawn 

Upon the sweltry banks of Acheron 

Swither and sway. And ever and anon 

Out of the margin of the mist there came 

Flurries of flame 

And drifts of scarlet scud, 

As if of glairy tears, and clotted blood, 

Together spun — 

Spindrift and spume of the vortiginous surge 

Of a sun-shattered sun, 



Around whose fiery wrack was furled the cloud, 
Like swaddling robes, or bridal veil, or shroud. 



11 



So seethed the cloud, and reeling from the gurge. 
Smelted and smoothened from the rough debris 
By the hot hands of Fire, the Thaumaturge, 
The Earth leapt free. 



Around it, burned and boomed a plangent sea 

That ever by the cruel knotted scourge 

Of a wild crashing rain of crimson scree 

Was whipped to plashing whirls of purple foam. 

And ever lashing from its daedal dome 

There hissed a heavy hail of falling stars 

Whose flick upon the lava's filigree 

Made rosy scars. 

And ever from the coastal crust of slag 

Slipped candent cliff and burning crag 

Into the cauldron of the bubbling ore, 

2 



And steamed and wallowed in the red fiords 
Like monstrous hordes 
Of snorting dragons weltering in gore, 
Stabbed in the loins with the long jagged swords 
Of the livid lightning. Yea, and evermore 
Came from volcano-throats the raucous roar 
Of lava and of thunder; and the shore 
Reverberated with the ponderous tide 
As the sun rose in reckless wrath and tore 
— ^Till the astounded stars heard the torn granite 

gride — 
The bossy, slaggy moon from the Earth's riven side. 

iii 

Still the hoarse thunder bellowed, still the fire 

Moulded to its desire 

Mountain and swire, 

And precipice and dale, 

So porphyry pinnacle and granite spire 

Guttered and sagged like candles in a gale; 

And basalt towers 

Wilted like flowers 



In scorching showers 

Of radiant hail; 

And the crust moaned 

And groaned 

And rose and fell 

Like the hot surges in the heart of hell. 

But round the planet in aetherial space 

There lurked a frost that gripped it like a vice 

A frost so fierce could curdle flame to ice — 

The frost of nothingness that never knew 

A genial flush of warmth come burning through 

Its deadly limbus. In its dire embrace 

The furnaces of fire forgot to glow; 

And from the welkin dun, 

Unlighted by the sun, 

A clattering clinker fell of iron snow. 

iv 

And from the white beclouded skies, 
Like scalding tears, 
From closed eyes, 
Held shut by fears, 

4 



Gripped tight by pain, 

There trickled through 

A drench of dew, 

An ooze of tepid rain, 

And down the smouldering hills, 

Gather, by slow accrue, 

A leash of little rills, 

Amber and blue. 



And rills became a stream, 

And streams to rivers grew. 

And in a cloud of steam 

Plunged madly out of view 

Down precipices steep 

Into a chasm deep 

Trenched and torn 

In the Earth's wounded side 

By the phrenetic tide 

When the white moon was born; 

Till, lo, in creeks and bights and bays, 

Clad in a shining rainbow haze, — 



A diapase 

Of chrysoprase, 

And lapis-lazuli, — 

There dreamed and gleamed, 

And played and swayed, 

And surged and sang the sea! 

vi 

Thus was our planet wrought by arts of war, 

By spear 

Of Tyr, 

By thunderbolt of Thor; 

Thus did granitic isle and iron floe, 

Welded and rivetted by hammer blow, 

Assume the semblance of a solid Earth, — ■ 

Become a womb, 

A cradle and a tomb, 

Where wondrous things had burial and birth. 

vii 

The lustral fires burned low. 

The lurid glow 

6 



Of the live lava dimmed and died away, 

Only betimes an ember, burning slovi^, 

Gleamed in the ashes grey. 

Like an eye glazed and dull 

In the worm-nibbled skull 

Of some dead beast of prey 

And softly round the ledges of the land 

The surf went fumbling like a lover's hand 

Feeling with wistful wonder 

A living heart thereunder 

That beat and throbbed athro' the silver sand; 

Or kneading clay and lime 

Into a tawny slime 

That in the swaying motion of the tide 

Quivered like some sea-monster's wrinkled hide. 

viii 

And, lo, upon the tawny briny mud 

Flickered a smouldering bud — 

A spark of green, — 

A little speck, a tiny spore, 

That on the vast savannahs of the shore 



Was hardly to be seen. / 

Not tinier the dust a zephyr blows 

From the new- ripened anther of a rose; 

Yet in its core 

Were hidden more 

Wisaom and love, 

Beauty and grace, 

Than all the suns and all the stars of space. 

ix 

Who in the store 

Of helpless atoms huddled on the shore 

Could have foreseen, 

Fore-guessed, foretold 

The vastitude of vernal green, 

The granaries of autumn gold?— 

Who in the voiceless atoms on the beach 

Could have fo reheard 

The singing of a bird 

The mighty harmonies of human speech? — 

Could have foreknown 

The living hands of flesh, and blood, and bone, 

8 



That from that little greenery would reach? — 

Who from the past 

Could have forecast 

The evolution of the future vast, 

And guessed that in the tiny cell, 

Were love, and hate, and heaven, and hell. 



Silently was the work of life begun ; 

Upon the fairy anvil beat the sun ; 

Into the elfin furnace rushed the air 

Forging shapes weak and strong, and foul and fair, 

While unseen Death and unsurmised Love 

Stood watching there 

Ready to test and prove, 

To kill and spare; 

And by and by the green began to move 

To breathe and feed, and swim and creep, 

To sprawl across the sand, and voyage o'er the deep. 

And by and by the sea grew white with swarms 

Of flimsy forms. 

9 



Bits of soft living slime, 

Prisoned in shells of lime 

Most delicately built, 

Went swimming to and fro, 

Or, dying, fell like snow. 

Luting the ocean floor with oozy silt. 

xi 

And now on land life was no longer dumb: 

Out of the ferns and moss, across the sky, 

Insects with gauzy wings began to fly, 

And buzz and hum, 

And in the grass, crickets began to try 

Their scrannel violins of wing and thigh; 

Anon, in marshes like the bogs of Styx 

Uncanny things half bird, half bat, 

And monstrous reptile shapes bloated or gaunt, — 

Atlantosaur, and archaeopteryx. 

And dinothere, and labyrinthodont. 

And pterodactyl, monstrous things begat. 

And evermore Death came, and laughed, and slew, 

And patient Life and Birth bent to their task anew. 

lO 



Xll 

Death wrought with divers tools. Unwearied 

Across the warp of life that wimpled red 

The lightning flashed, shooting a livid thread 

Like signatures of the undying dead — 

Through the half-woven tapestries of doom; 

And the mephitic breath and mordant fume 

Of the hot-throated craters scorched and charred 

The living lengthening web; and through the gloom 

Some tempest howling shrill, and breathing hard 

Frayed Life's unfinished fringes; and disease. 

Nibbled the fairy fabric as the seas 

Nibble their rocky headlands. Yet, unmarred 

Unscathed, unscarred. 

Life ever wove in carpel and in womb 

Imperishable webs of flesh and bloom. 

xiii 

Crumpled the cooling crust, and the deep ocean bed 

Luted with lime and slime of creatures dead 

— ^That snow of death through the long aeons shed — 

II 



Was puckered into marble mountain heights 
— Himalayas and Alps, and Dolomites — 
Where eagles had their eyries, and once more 
Subsided and became the ocean floor; 
And fire piled high sierras, and the rains 
Wore them down inch by inch to desert plains; 
And inch by inch the coral islands grew, 
Like daisy garlands, in the ocean blue, 
And inch by inch the glaciers ground away 
The granite boulders into boulder-clay; 
Yet never ceased the seethe of life, and still 
Birth bore new forms faster than death could kill. 

ziv 

So the fierce aeons ran, 
Till with exalted head 
Throned upon the dead, 
There stood immortal man- 
Fruitage of all the tilth 
And spilth 
Of fire- 
Following dreams and driven by desire. 

12 



Through the gate of breath, 

In the arms of Death, 

By the path of Love, from the pit of shame, 

With a fiery past. 

And a future vast, 

To the vi^orld he came. 

XV 

Spawn he was in the steamy mire. 

Fins he was in a primal sea. 

Wings he was in the feathered choir, 

Or ever he came a man to be. 

Of dead the mountain peaks are built, 

Of dead the soil, of dead the silt — 

The dead that led the way to him 

Through shell and claw to brain and limb. 

In every thought, in every part. 

Made is he of a million slain. 

Blood of the dead is in his heart. 

Dreams of the dead are in his brain. 



13 



XVI 



Made at such infinite and fiery cost, 

Wrought with such delicate and deadly art, 

— Spirit and heart — 

Out of things born, and buried, found and lost — 

With all the energies of fire and frost 

Of wind and flood 

Of life and death 

Tempestuous in his tidal blood 

Combustive in his burning breath — 

With unconsumed Eternity behind, 

With unconceived Eternity before, 

Man, the custodian of immortal mind, 

Stood with bewildered senses at the door 

Of darkling wisdom. Round him still was blore 

Of tempest and of furnace. From the peak 

The purple pennons of volcano-reek, 

That the fire tossed and tore 

Streamed in the sky an omen and ostent 

Of bloody battle, and belligerent 

He heard the salvos of the thunder speak 

H 



And crash 

And roar. 

He watched the lightning's white stiletto flash 

And stab and gash 

The bosom of the darkness as a fiend 

Might stab a swarthy woman lying dead; 

He saw the forest like a cornfield gleaned 

By the white sickles of a surging flood ; 

And even the gorgeous sky of gold and red 

Seemed a God's brazen byrny oozing blood. 

Yea and he saw 

How talon, tooth, and claw 

Waged internecine combat, and he, too. 

Seeing that life was war, went forth and slew. 

xvii 
Naked and weak. 

He flaked a flint, and strung a hickory bow, 
And struck a spark, and in a mountain gorge 
Hammered a spear, upon a granite forge 
With cunning blow. 
And spoored the mammoth o'er the prairie bleak, 

15 



And faced and fought it to its overthrow; 
And stabbed the bear upon the glacial peak, 
And clubbed the walrus on the drifting floe, 
Till the warm blood ran crimson to the creek, 
Steaming upon the snow. 

xviii 

No fear could blear his sight, no woe could blanch 
His vivid blood. The glacial avalanche 
Like a white Juggernaut rode down the land 
Trampling the forests with a madman's lust, 
Braying the iron-hearted rocks to dust, 
And drift, and sand. 

And famine, and fatigue, and cold, and pain 
Cramped his fierce heart and froze his fervid breath 
Yet still he conquered. At his feet in death 
Writhed monsters could have crunched him 'tween 

their teeth 
Like a ripe berry, or a cob of grain. 
But there he stood with all the world beneath, 
A pigmy creature with a giant brain. 
i6 



XIX 

Yet came no peace. Still in his heart was strife; 

A far fore-seeing Fate 

Using his pride and Hate, 

Wrought at the web of life; 

And driven still 

By his own passionate will 

Upon a bloody way, 

He seized his sword his brother man to slay. 

Nation slew nation: horde abolished horde. 

Vengeance and famine swept whole tribes away, 

And still there sped the spear and flashed the sword, 

Carving the human clay; 

And still life came of death, and joy of pain, 

And still, as Man his fellow-mortals slew. 

Like a red rose, watered with bloody rain, 

The human spirit grew, — 

Grew in the depth and height of its desire, 

Grew as the Earth had grown amid the fire. 



17 



PART II 



What Chalybes 

Are these? 

A million fires, a million furnaces 

Flicker and flare. 

The maw of Earth disgorges 

Fuel for mighty forges; 

Antediluvian trees 

From Carboniferous bogs 

Sublimed to fiery fogs, 

Pollute the golden air. 

The flames upleap and flash, 

The hammers swing and crash, 

What Chalybes 

Are these? 

What are they forging there? 

1$ 



J1 

The fiery chimneys belch Fear's mordant breath. 

The noisy forges beat the tune of Death. 

Hate swings his hammer on the trenchant steel. 

Untiringly with bony bloody heel, 

Death works the bellows: at macabre looms, 

Despair and Wrath are weaving tragic dooms; 

And all men's art, 

Wisdom and skill, 

Courage of heart. 

And force of will. 

Their love of good, their faith in God, 

Their power to crave, and to abhor. 

Are grown to crank and piston-rod, 

In the grim red machine of war. 

iii 

Like belt, and wheel, and blade and shaft, 
They ply a dull mechanic craft; 
Their hearts beat in the hammer blow. 
And with the roaring furnace draught 

19 



Their breathings and their sighings go. 
Outside are wings and summer winds, 
And sunlight dancing on the sea, 
And woods, and hills, but they are blind 
With hate and fear, and cannot see. 
Outside is singing and a thrush 
Calls through the lilac to its mate; 
They only hear the roar and rush 
Of the insensate wheels of Fate. 
With bodies weary, souls outworn, 
They watch the wondrous years go by. 
Toiling that Freedom may be born, 
Turned into dead machines they die. 



And who are these 

Who march amain 

From Cossack steppe, and Belgian plain, 

From heathlands of the Hebrides, 

And lily gardens of Touraine, 

From little happy villages, 

20 



Mid Roman roses, Saxon vines, 

From minarets and palaces. 

By Delhi palms, and Danube pines. 

These are the cohorts Fate has hurled 
Armed with a sword, a soul, a dream — 
These are the warriors Fate has hurled 
To slaughter and redeem 
The world. 

These are the fierce primaeval fires, 
Of God's desires — 
His furnace flame, His breaker-surge. 
His graving tool. His pruning knife, His punitory 

scourge! 

V 

Great slogans drive them forth, great battle-cries — 

''Liberty," "Fatherland!" The bounding blood 

In their own fearless hearts is as the flow 

Of an insurgent flood, and in their eyes 

The wild auroral lights of battle glow. 

Yea, and they know 

The gentle, low, 

21 



Pleading, persuasive voices of the dead, 

The far forlorn 

Sweet baby-whispers of the yet unborn. 

By all these are they called, and lured, and led, 

And overhead, 

Unsoiled, untorn, 

As their dreams golden, as their passions red, 

Flutter the broidered banners of the Morn. 

vi 

As in a dream I watch them go, 
From Seine to Aisne, 
From Mons to Meaux; 
I see them in a blazing hell 
Of poison-gas, and shot, and shell, 
At Vimy Ridge, and La Boiselle, 
At Pozieres and Neuve Chapelle, 
At Ypres, and Fler, and Le Cateau; 
I see them march by Meuse and Marne 
Trudging along through mud and clay; 
I see them camp in field and barn. 
In stable and estaminet. 

22 



I see them on the Anzac beach, 

On Balkan hill, on Tigris sand. 

Armies of divers creed and speech, 

Each with destruction in its hand. 

Each true and brave. 

Dying to save 

The Honour of its Fatherland. 



Vll 

O eyes with dauntless courage lit 
Enamoured of the fierce Unknown 
Where dreams of splendid glory flit. 
And bugle-calls are blown ! 
White limbs so lithe 
Red hearts so blithe, 
Bright souls so true, 
The sword will harvest like a scythe 
Long bloody swathes of you! 



23 



PART III 



What troglodytes are these, — these men like moles, 

Who tunnel in the soil their saps and mines, 

Or burrow holes, 

Into the rocks under the roots of pines; 

Who make their homes 

In catacombs, 

Or crouch on rotten planks and muddy logs 

In desolate obscene Serbonian bogs; 

Who in the craters of the riven land 

Contrive their hornet-nests with bags of sand, 

And mud, and slime, — 

Are these weird creatures all alive with lice. 

And black with grime 

Our sons, our fathers, and our husbands ! Yea, 

24 



This is the altar of their sacrifice, 

This is the price 

That for your sakes they pay. 

"»* 
11 

Hour follows barren hour, till heart and brain 

Grow stagnant as the water in the trench. 

Penned in a aitch upon a muddy plain, 

Poisoned and palsied by the sickly stench — 

The festering corruption of the slain. 

Body and soul seem impotent and vain. 

There in a bloody pool 

A carrion crow pecks at a bloated horse; 

And some poor fool. 

Sniped like a frightened rabbit in the gorse, 

Has left on No-man's Land his huddled corse; 

And there some forty — fifty yards away, 

Lusting to slay, 

The toe makes caves 

And pits, and graves. 

In the same mud and clay, 

25 



Yet none have hate 

Save against Fate 

That turns poor simple men into wild beasts of prey. 

• • • 

111 

Can this foul charnel damp, 

This spiritual cramp, 

This lewd stagnation of the soul be war? 

Where are the battle-cries, 

The flashing eyes, 

The flying banners and the spears of Thor? 

Here there are only mud, and filth, and flies, 

And foul obscenities men's hearts abhor. 

Where are the flaming hope, the fiery cross 

That called us to the rampart and the fosse? 

Alas, alas, faint, far-away they seem 

Like a dim memory of a holy dream. 



* 



26 



IV 



Now Moloch goes to reap, 

Across the sky his search-lights wheel and flash, 

His livid lightnings leap, 

His thunders crash. 

The gobbling howitzers and whinneying guns 

Sound like the howling billows of the deep, 

Hurled on a rocky steep 

By a tornado's ire. 

The tumult stupefies and stuns 

Spirit and sense, as, like a devil's choir, 

Ten thousand mouths of steel give tongue and spit, 

In stuttering staccato, lead and fire. 

The bullets of the shrapnel hiss and thud, 

The star-shells burst in bud. 

Orange, and green, and red ; 

The rockets rise and spread. 

Their blossoms overhead; 

And every trench and every crater-pit 

Is blotched with blood 

And dappled with the dead. 

27 



V 

The belching mortars with war-drunken breath 
Hiccup forth shells, whose entrails — flame and death- 
Make every mound and parapet a pyre, 
And bloody shards that turn the spirit sick 
Lie mangled in the mire, 
Or on the barbed wire 
Where the infernal flammenwerfer lick 
Shrivel and blacken. E'en the gracious air 
That has been wont to tremble into prayer, 
To throb and thrill 
And vibrate into music at our will, 
Is turned to steel and stone, and strikes to kill; 
While poisonous and thick. 
Out of strange Stygian glooms, 
Wreath after yellow wreath, 
Rise acrid fumes 

That grip and tear the throat like fiery teeth 
Of some grim dragon snorting flames of hell, 
Yea, grip with grip accurst 
Till the blue veins upon the forehead swell 
And the blear eyeballs burst. 
28 



VI 

Above the vapour, loom the monstrous wings 

Of fierce uncanny harpy things — 

White hawks and kites of hate that whir and fly 

Dropping down death from the unheeding sky. 

Across the plain with mighty mottled flanks 

Waddle reptilian tanks — 

Iguanodons and Juggernauts of steel — 

These nose their way 

Through mud and clay 

And crush and mutilate with cloven heel 

The fallen and the dying, till the mud 

Is like a winepress, purpurate with blood 

Of mangled mortals. On the sea afloat 

Great Boats of Battle cleave the waves asunder, 

Keel after keel, 

And stertorously, through the strident throat 

Of giant guns, join in the battle thunder. 

While deep thereunder 

In the blue water's mirk 

There slink and lurk 

Black submarines, like devils with a dirk. 

4: He 4: * 4: 4e 



29 



Vll 

Now through the forests drives the shrapnel hail; 

Great jagged flying hatchets hew and hack, 

And whirling blazing flambeaus flash and flare, 

Flaying the beeches bare, 

Burning the birches black. 

The woods are threshed as by a flaming flail 

The mighty branches splinter, split, and crack, 

The growth of twenty centuries, alack, 

The patient carpentry of sun and rain, 

The moonbeams' and the sunbeams' bivouac, 

Becomes a piteous wrack — 

A black and bloody shambles of the slain, 

A Golgotha of skulls, a hideous house of Pain. 

viii 
O friendly trees, 

O brave brown branches swaying in the breeze 
Full of young hopes, full of old memories, 
O cool green leaves that whispered to the moon, 
Or threw the tune 
Of singing thrushes to the evening air, 

30 



Or scattered dew upon the thirsty sod 

How ye are hacked and hewn 

Nought now but shrivelled blackened stumps are there, 

As tho' a leprous blasphemous Despair 

Uplifted handless arms to heartless God! 

ix 

The craterous soil bludgeoned, and scalped, and tossed, 

Is like a stormy sea congealed by frost, 

And every hummocky wave 

Of mud and clay 

Is like a mighty barrow grave, — 

An ossuary of the brave. 

Frozen, and still, and grey. 

Ah bitter barren sea thy tide devours — 

Thy surf and spume 

Engluf, entomb 

Hamlets, and thorps, and cottages, and towers, 

Castles and palaces, and barns and bields, 

Orchards and gardens, white and red with flowers, 

Arcades of roses, honeysuckle-bowers, 

Vineyards, and olive-groves, and harvest-fields! 

31 



Ah bitter barren sea! 

The quiet home where children used to play 

Or kneel and pray 

Beside a mother's knee 

Huddles a heap of rubble in the mire, 

Or, burnt by fire, 

Stands like a dead man's dream 

Nor light, nor love, nor joyance may redeem — 

Stands with black rafters where the blind bats sway 

Like little corses on a gibbet beam — 

Where the rats climb and scamper night and day, 

And carrion-crows 

In greedy rows 

Wrangle and scream 

Above their prey. 



XI 



All that Love's labour through long years of toil 
Had sorely wrested from the stubborn soil — 

32 



The white-washed cottage with the thatched eaves 

And portico entwined with ivy leaves, 

The rugged poplars of the avenue, 

The hedges glistening with morning dew 

Strung like round pearls upon a gossamer thread, 

All these are gone — all these are gone and dead. 

The olive-groves, the vines, the wheat, the maize. 

The meadows where the kine were wont to graze, 

The cosy arbour in the orchard nook, 

The rustic bridge across the gurgling brook 

To the old mossy drowsy droning mill, — 

All these the tides of fire and death erase 

And rend, and burn, and blacken. 

Yea, and still 

The howling havoc sweeps across the land. 

Valley and moor, and hill 

Are scourged and devastated. Bomb and brand 

Murder and maim, 

Ravage and rape. 

Cathedrals topple, cities fall in flame. 

And church-yards yawn and gape. 

There in his shrine Christ is re-crucified: 



33 



The bullets on the nails like hammers beat: 
The bayonets are in his wounded side; 
The daggers have transfixed his patient feet. 

• • 

Xll 

Behold the tabid tundra-land of Sin 

Where like a yellow mist from brackish streams 

Drift melancholy ghosts of Hopes and Dreams ! 

Behold the dreary deadland where the thin 

Fingers of Famine rake the garbage heap 

Seeking a crust therein, — 

Where Pestilence and Plague with jaundiced skin 

Shamble and creep — 

Where ghastly bundles in the petrol steep, 

And flames incredible begin to leap 

Robbing the rats and maggots of their prey — 

Round pitiful thing in bloody brown and grey, 

Where buried in some dug-out like a tomb 

Men in the gloom 

Despairing lie 

And call in vain to Death and cannot die! 

34 



XIU 

Here huddle all the scarred, 

The halt, the lame. 

Those blinded, broken, marred 

By steel and flame. 

Here the mad walk apart 

With tears in their heart, — 

Tears that will not flow 

That will not gently rise 

To cool their aching eyes 

Scalded with tearless woe. 

They cannot weep, but sometimes laughter vain 

Shrieks on their lips 

Where still there drips 

The dregs of some red cup of poisoned pain 

Whose draught has slain the soul and seared the brain. 

Behold the land where men their victories win! 

Behold the dreary tundra-land of Sin! 

xiv 

Yet still in Tartaraean glooms, 
In muddy pits like fetid tombs, 

35 



The thunder-fiends of battle stoke 
The lightning fires of tragic dooms, 
And woolly wisps of yellow smoke, 
And green, and red, and purple fumes. 
Like feathery funereal plumes. 
Flutter, or on the wind upborne. 
Billow and fly 
Upon the sky 
Like splendid banners slashed and torn. 

XV 

The planet is all tumult and turmoil, 
And madly on the pocked and pitted soil 
Drums Death's insane hysterical tattoo — 
The carmagnole of guns, la folic des obus. 
The whole air cleft asunder 
Reverberates in thunder, 

Whines, whimpers, whinnies, shudders, shrieks and 

screams 
As though the stars were on the mountains hurled 
By demons in demoniac nightmare dreams, 
36 



As though the Earth's foundation-stones were riven, 

As though by plectron of a bomb, or shell, 

Or twitching fingertips of fire, or levin, 

Death plucked the nerves and sinews of the world, 

Strung on a harp whose pedestal was set 

Upon the flaming floor of hell, 

And yet 

Whose pillars propped the very roof of heaven. 



XVI 



The thunder pauses. With a shriek and roar 
"Over the top" surges a line of steel. 
Behind cascades of fire that foam before. 
The hounds of war go baying at Death's heel, — 
Go baying on a trail of human gore. 
Out of the broken trenches blink and peer 
The beady eyes of muddy human moles 
That glitter with alternate hate and fear 
Like wind-swept incalescent brazier coals. 
Death is upon them, the bright steel grows red, 
And greedy Hate is glutted with the dead. 



37 



XVll 

The 'Tush" is over, and ten thousand things 

That once were Nature's lords and Nature's Kings 

That once were men, lie writhing in the clay, 

Lie with pink bubbles frothing on their lips, 

With gaping wounds from which their life-blood drips, 

With filmy eyes o'ershadowed by eclipse, 

With arms and legs and faces shot away. 

O fair white bodies lying in the mud 

So stiff and grey, 

Once in your hearts there leapt the living blood, 

Once your cold lips could love, and sing, and pray, 

Once women at your coming knew the kiss 

Of husband, father, brother, lover, son. 

Alas, alas, how have ye come to this 

What have ye done? 

xviii 

Has Fate no pity, and has Hate no ruth? 
Did God the Maker blunder 
Making your bodies' wonder 

38 



Filling your hearts with love your minds with truth? 

Did God the Father blunder 

Making your bodies' wonder, 

Filling your limbs with force your souls with fire 

With all the dreams and all the hopes of youth, 

To leave you bloody carrion in the mire? 

xix 

Nay, who can tell what such a death may mean? 

To be o'ertaken 

By lightning and by thunder: 

To feel the keen 

Sharp blade divide asunder 

Body and soul, the unseen and the seen! 

To be reborn 

Through the sky rent and torn 

And on a sudden waken 

Into a peace serene 

Into the radiance of eternal morn? 

Who, who can guess, what such a birth may mean 

To him who goes with body young and clean 

39 



To him who goes with spirit pure and fresh, 
Unknowing blemish and unwotting blame, 
In hot pursuit of some immortal aim 
Out of the flesh? 

XX 

A warrior, a lover 

What hopes and dreams will hover 

Around his head 

What beauty will his spirit 

Develop and discover 

What glory-land of merit 

Inhabit and inherit 

There in the starry kingdom of the immortal dead? 

Surely he will come forth exultant, whole, 

Happy, victorious, and unafraid, 

A shining, joyous, liberated soul 

Knighted by Death's immortal accolade! 



40 



PART IV 

1 

Spawn 

Of a monstrous dawn 

Bleary and blind, 

Spindrift and spume 

Adrift in the gloom 

Torn from the surf of the sun 

As by teeth of a wind, 

So was the Earth begot and begun — 

Earth and mankind. 

11 

Still in our Armageddon burn the old creative fires. 
Still with a sword, a flame, a dream, Life works its 

fierce desires, 

41 



Still the world is smelted and wrought as in an 

athanor — 
Swelters and sweals in the roaring blast of the furnaces 

of War 
But how can we whose paltry life is pent in a petty hour 
How can we in faith foresee that Hate in Love will 

flower? 
How can we know what the fiery Woe smelting the 

bloody clay 
Moulds and fashions, with pains and passions, for aeons 

as far away 
As the lava and lime of bygone time when the young 

Earth panted flame. 
And out of its wondrous thund'rous heart the burning 

mountains came? 
How can we know that the soul will grow? Seen have 

we the past 
Seen have we the slaggy scree in a blazing furnace cast 
Seen have we the fingers of flame, and water, and tem- 
pest mould 
Things as a lily petal fine, as a granite mountain vast; 



42 



Seen have we a filmy cloud in voids of space unfold 
As sapphire seas, and emerald trees, and meadows of 

yellow gold. 

iii 

We who have seen white Peace come forth thro' the 

fiery gates of Strife, 
We who have seen wise Death at work at the magic 

loom of Life, 
We who have seen the living bones of our living bodies 

built 
Of the porcelain shells of the dainty dead piled in the 

deep-sea silt. 
We who have seen the atoms dance into bird, and beast, 

and flower, 
How shall we doubt Death's Wisdom, how shall we 

doubt Love's power? 
Out of the fiery tumult there thrilled the vibrant crea- 
tive Word, 
Out of the moaning thunder there leapt the joyous lilt 

of a bird, 

43 



Out of the lurid lightning there shone the light of a 

woman's eyes 
And we know tho' Death may come and go yet Beauty 

never dies. 



IV 

Bodies and souls from a furnace came, and lo, in a 

furnace still 
War is moulding the human heart, smelting the human 

will. 
Things of the spirit, things of the mind, these are the 

things at stake. 
Not bodies only but faiths and creeds the bomb and the 

bullet break. 
Not mortals only but mortal sins the fire and the shrap- 
nel slay 
And aspirations, ideals, hopes perish and pass away. 
These are not swords but living souls that clash in the 

trenches there 
Not battle-planes, but battle-dreams that fight in the 

azure air. 

44 



Foolish may be our war-desires, blundering, blind our 

aims 
But still the shoddy and sham of life are burned in the 

battle flames. 
By tempest, by fire, by talons and teeth, by war, and dis- 
ease and lust 
The hand of Death and the hand of Life have wrought 

at our wondrous dust 
But ever above, the hand of Love our destiny controls 
Moulding to beauty and to truth our bodies and our 

souls. 



But why should we destroy 

A body like a temple full of joy 

A temple yea, a Hecatompuloi, 

With golden gates 

Mighty and broad, 

Made not for little Fears and Hates, 

But for the fiery Chariots of God. 

Why must we slay? We know not why. 

With holy pleas we go to kill ; 

45 



With noble aims we go to die; 
But ever still, 

Behind our dreams, behind our will, 
There work inevitable Fates 
Whose far desires our swords fulfil. 
We know not why ! 
Our words are vain! 
No gleaming words can glorify 
So much of sin so much of pain. 
But we are driven by the Soul 
That with his Beauty maketh whole 
Even the wounded and the slain. 

vi 

Caesar and Tamurlaine and Rameses 
Martel the Hammer, Attila the Scourge, 
Sardanapalus and Miltiades, 
Cyrus, Sennacherib, yea all of these 
Were but the surge 
Behind the urge 
Of boundless seas, 

46 



Were but the ripple and the spray 
Of far-away 
Infinities. 

That which they did they know not, neither knew 
What fair far things they fashioned as they slew, 
But Death and Life were wise, 
With prudent prescient eyes, 
And still eternally Man's spirit grew, 
And still the Lord, 
Keeping a watch and ward, 

Shapes man's immortal soul by man's own foolish 

sword. 

vii 

Cause and cause behind cause 

Root and root beyond root 

Laws and laws behind laws 

Ripen war's bloody fruit 

But the bloody ripened fruit of the tree of Strife 

In a core of love has the seed of eternal Life. 

These are the throes 

That make the rose, 

47 



These are the precious pangs of birth, 

These are the woes 

Whence ever grows 

The myriad Beauty of the Earth. 



Vlll 



O seismic souls of men, the shaken world 
Won peace and beauty after wild turmoil. 
The flowers their silken bannerets unfurled, 
The meadows comforted the tortured soil; 
And now while still the craters trickle blood, 
While still the ground is scourged by fiery rains, 
The cornflowers and the poppies burst in bud 
From the warm ichor of Life's genial veins; 
And in the ulcerous gashes of the shells 
In fcEtid hells, 

In leprous thickets full of death and shame, 
Twinkle the starwort, and the pimpernels. 
And gorse, and charlock, and laburnum flame; 
And while the raucous cannon belch and roar. 
In sudden silences amid the thunder 
We hear the skylarks singing as they soar 

48 



Of beauty and of wonder; 
And in the trenches, cheek by jowl with Death, 
(O heart of Youth indomitably strong!) 
We hear the muddy boys with merry breath 
Chorus a mirthful song. 

ix 

And all these cataclysms of the soul 

Will end in light, and harmony, and peace : 

The battle-thunder will no longer roll, 

The roar of guns will cease. 

Only the embattled legions of the mind 

Spirit with spirit will in love contend 

To comprehend 

The Soul behind 

Beauty and Power — 

The Love that sighs in every wind 

And buds in every flower. 



Time is so brief. Eternity so long, 
Life is so low, Infinity so high, 

49 



Our bodies are so weak, and Death so strong, 
So soon we wither and so soon we die. 
That only things of spirit will endure 
And love itself only of Love is sure. 
Yet if we clutch the Eternity in Time 
The Infinity that lurks in finite things — 
If still we soar and still we climb 
With wounded feet and weary wings 
Still higher in the realm of thought — 
If we have agonized and fought 
For Truth and Beauty day by day 
The little things that we have wrought 
Will never fade and die away 
But grow and spread 
As from the dead 
Evolved our bodies' magic clay. 

xi 

O, brave the banners flowing 
Inscribed with holy names, 
O, bravely men are going 
Into the battle-flames! 

SO 



And bravely men have striven 
For this or that high prize 
Yet they are drawn and driven 
To ends they have not wrought for 
To good they have not sought for 
To goals they have not fought for, 
By Love that never dies — 
By the same Love impassioned 
That filled the Earth with fire, 
And fiercely finely fashioned 
In Beauty its Desire — 
By the same Love whose sighing 
Is Pity's gentle breath 
By the same Love who dying 
Conquered Death. 

xii 

Not conquests of great cities 
Not mastery of great seas 
But little loves and pities 
Will be their victories, 

51 



Yea little loves and pities 
And children on their knees — 
Fair children to inherit 
New soarings of the soul, 
New faculties of spirit, 
As centuries unroll, — 
Not arrogant ambitions 
For Empire rich and broad, 
But ever brighter Visions 
Of the wise heart of God. 

From every crater bloody 
Will bloom a kindly thought; 
From every tortured body 
Some beauty will be wrought. 
Love will again awaken, 
Truth will regain her crown; 
Men's seismic souls have shaken 
A million Dagons down. 



S* 



OTHER POEMS 



S3 



A Quatercentenary Ode* 

Eternity is throned upon thy spires : 

Upon Eternity thy towers rest: 

Thou wert conceived in the eternal fires 

Of the sun's womb : upon the sun's white breast 

Wert carried ere the souls of men were made — 

Nay, in the nebula the seed was sown 

Of every stone, 

And by the stars were thy foundations laid. 

The fire-mist held thee ere the sun it bore; 

The sun had presage of thee ere she hurled 

From her wild heart the world ; 

And the hot world enwrapped thee at its core, 

In lava and in lightning, to await 

The slow, fastidious finishing of Fate. 

Then the round earth grew furrowed and grew frore, 

And the encircling steam, 

♦Written for the University of Aberdeen. 

55 



Condensing in a stream, 

Hissed, boiling, bubbling on a barren shore, 

Till the Word spake, and then 

There blossomed flowers, and beasts, and souls of men ; 

And lo, in man's magnificent desires 

And high imaginations, wilful, warm, 

Thy polished pinnacles, and frosty spires, 

Took shape and form. 

Till all this growth of granite towers. 

And pediments and columns round, 

Like spikelets of colossal flowers. 

Came burning through the ground. 

Eternity was author of thy plan; 

The fire-mist, and the sun, and earth, and man 

Joined in thy making. Yea, by fire and thought 

The gracious granite miracle was wrought. 

And now thou art full-grown, 

Full-leaved, full-blown — 

An encrinite. 

Stately and white, 

A lily made of stone — 



A torch that flares across the night 

Of the Unknown — 

The spindle and the loom of light — 

An altar and a throne — 

A temple where the feet of Truth may fare — 

A peak where wisdom may be set on high, 

Under a cloudless sky, 

In Alpine air. 

Yet what of Truth and Wisdom can we share, — 

We who have seen Eternities prepare 

The granite there, 

"The polisht stones and squair," 

We who have watched worlds blossom and worlds die. 

Who find beneath the silt of ancient seas, 

Antediluvian cosmogonies? 

How can we guess at things so far away? 

How read the Mind who shapes the feathery snows 

Then knits a glacier to knead the clay 

That makes a rose. 

Who sends the cataracts with heavy feet, 

And white tumultuous toil, 

57 



To grind the rocks to make a meadow sweet 
Giving the daisies soil? 

How can we Know? What knowledge can we win? 

The spindles flash : the mighty Destinies spin — 

We know not whence we came, or whither wc go. 

What can we know? 

How can we mete the masonry of God? 

Our spirits are His trowel and His hod. 

We guess a part : He pre-ordains the whole. 

We lay a stone : He labours at a soul. 

How can we see with His all-seeing sight 

Issues so broad, 

Meanings so infinite? 

How can we know? How can we understand? 

Who build a house of Truth upon the sand 

Knowing the corner stone to be a lie. 

Knowing the roof 

Not lightning-proof, 

A travesty and mockery of the sky. 

How can we know, who know our truth is based 

58 



On finite facts by infinity effaced, 

On parallels that meet in space behind, 

On matter that is force, unconscious, blind? 

How can we know whose knowledge is so small? 

Why should we know? Why should we live at all? 

Why all this toil and strife? 

How did the Chaos burgeon into life? 

Did it imagine, when the toil begun, 

'Twould blossom into star, and moon, and sun 

Rolling to rhythmic music? Toil seemed vain. 

Mistily, vaguely, dizzily it spun 

Racked with strange pain, 

In fiery rain. 

Through black abysses, while the cosmic power 

Compelled it into bird, and beast, and flower, 

And this grey temple's pinnacle and tower. 

Truth is eternities away, 
And we but climb, 
In the dark of Time, 
To the dawn of day. 



59 



What if the truth we do not see? 

What matters truth, 

To love and youth, 

Who labour for eternity? 

What if an error or a flaw 

Life's beauty mars? 

We are hammered to eternal law, 

On love's high stithy by the stars. 

The hands that made these spires were held 

By the strong hand that holds the seas. 

And every pillar was compelled, 

By mighty cosmic energies. 

And what we have not rightly wrought 

In stone or thought 

Will not endure ; yet even so 

Out of the false the true will grow. 

And in this temple by the Northern Sea 

Continually 

Will surge and seethe the fire-mist of the mind 

Fettered and free, 

Radiant and blind — 

60 



Will bud and blossom nebulas of soul, 
Till bright, and true, and round, and whole, 
Love's planets in their orbits roll, 
And wandering Wills their Centre find. 



6i 



"Blue of Smoke" 

Her dreamy eyes are of the blue of smoke, 
That softly, frond by frond, and gyre by gyre, 
O'er some thatched bothy, in a Highland glen, 
Unfurls at gloaming from an ingle fire, 

Whose hearth-stone is love's altar, — blue of smoke 
Ascending, blending in blue heaven away, — 
Blue of the fragrant smoke of vestal flame 
That in her virgin heart burns night and day. 



62 



General Booth 

Out of the slums 

Wild music comes, 
The pipe of flutes, the boom of drums, 
And down the street strange banners flare. 
What means this noise? What means this blare? 
This clash of song, this crash of prayer? 
What mean these mingled tears and flame? 
This glory on the face of shame? 
It is the Army of the Lord, 
It is the clashing of His sword, 
It is His axe's merry din. 
Upon the brazen casque of sin. 

Out of the slums 
Sad music comes. 
Low mournful flutes, and muffled drums, 

63 



God's greatest warrior is dead. 
The fearless fighting-man who led 
The Army 'gainst the hordes of Wrong 
With crash of prayer and clash of song, 
Lies silent in the fosse of Death, 
With stiffened limbs and frozen breath. 

Out of the slums, 

Glad music comes, 
Exultant flutes, triumphant drums. 
He is not dead ; he layeth down 
His sword and cross to take his crown. 
He is not dead; his dauntless will 
Will lead his faithful army still. 
His drums will boom, his flags will flare, 
His flutes will pipe, his trumpets blare, 
Till in the shadow of the slums 
Love's banner flies, God's Kingdom comes. 



64 



A Flying Song 

O THE proud purr of it! 

Whiz of it, whir of it! 

O the fierce might of it, 

Flare of it, flight of it, 

Spin of it, speed of it. 

Grip of it, greed of it! 

O the wild will of it. 

Throb of it, thrill of it, 

Vim of it, verve of it. 

Swoop of it, swerve of it! 
Like a great dragon-fly over the blue. 
So it flared, so it flashed, so it flickered and flew. 



6S 



Nay, but the Hand of it, 

Taking command of it; 

And the wise Soul of it, 

Keeping control of it; 

And the brave Heart of it, 

Beating as part of it, 

Aiming the dart of it 

Into the air: 

That is the best of it, 

Ruling the rest of it. 

That is the marvel and miracle there! 

Yonder no engine, witless and blind, 

Driven by senseless piston and rod; 

Its pinions are courage, its pilot is mind; 

Its petrol and steam 

Are vision and dream; 
Its nostrils are filled with the breath of a god, 
For there, like a speck, 'twixt the wings' mighty span, 
Sit the Courage and Cunning and Strength of a Man! 
O wind thou art humbled, O space thou art slain 
By the wiles of a heart, and the wit of a brain! 

66 



O the way of it, 
Swoop of it, sway of it! 
O the wild will of it, 
Throb of it, thrill of it! 



(>1 



"In the White City of Thy Soul" 

In the white city of thy soul 
I 'see thy flickering, dim desires, 
Like frozen fires, 
That faintly glow, 
And all the pinnacles and spires 
Are fashioned of virgin snow; 
Thro' the white city of thy soul. 
The thin wan feet of Fancies go. 

In the white city of thy soul 

Are great, unlit, mysterious towers, 

Where passionate Powers 

Are laid asleep, 

And all the paths arc hid with flowers, 

Which only passing Angels reap; 

In the white city of thy soul. 

No joys exult, no sorrows weep. 

68 



In the white city of thy soul, 

On silence built, with silence crowned, 

There is no sound — 

But whispered prayer. 

No laughter in the streets is found, 

Nor curse of sin, nor sign of care. 

In the white city of thy soul 

All things are calm, and cold, and fair. 

Round the white city of thy soul 
High battlements and ramparts run, 
Keeping the sun 
And wind away; 

And dreams in cloistered shadows shun 
The light and noise of garish day. 
Round the white city of thy soul 
Are turrets tall, and strong, and grey. 

It lies, the city of thy soul, 
White and mysterious and dim, 
Filled to the brim 
With poesio — 



69 



A chalice with a carven rim 
Of lieur de lys. 
It sleeps, the city of thy soul, 
From pity and from passion free. 

Yet to the city of thy soul 

A day will come, when every wall 

Will shake, will fall, 

Will crash asunder, 

For to thy heart a heart will call 

With a beat of thunder. 

And all the city of thy soul 

Will grow alight with joy and wonder. 

Then, in the city of thy soul, 
The frozen flames will flare and leap, 
The Powers asleep 
Irradiant rise; 

In the green gardens men will reap 
Beauty, and wisdom, songs and sighs, 
And all the city of thy soul 
Will be alive with happy eyes. 
70 



In the white city of thy soul, 

The cloistered dreams will all come true, 

And dance in dew. 

And hail the sun, 

And all the visions they pursue, 

Of fancy born, of moonlight spun, 

In the white city of thy soul 

Will grow incarnate one by one. 

In the white city of thy soul. 

Each dim arcade, each mystic street, 

Will grow as sweet 

As April-tide; 

And Joy will run with the happy feet 

And rosy blushes of a bride, 

For, through the city of thy soul, 

Love like a King will ride. 



71 



To Sir William Watson 

(On the Occasion of his Receiving an LL.D. from 
Aberdeen University) 

Not by such music as Amphion played; 
Not by the subtile silt of ancient seas 
Building an oozy rock by slow degrees, 
Terrace on terrace in the ocean shade, 
Not so the granite corner-stones were laid. 
But forged by Nature's procreant decrees. 
In roaring subterranean furnaces, 
Most painfully, most passionately made. 

They came forth molten. And each granite street, 
Each hoary pinnacle, and frosty spire, 
Remembering the fierce parturient heat. 
Hail the marmorean music of thy lyre, 
Forged by thy poet heart's impassioned heat 
In a crater's crimson crucible of fire. 
72 



Battle 

Thy beauty is bugle and banner — bugle, and banner, 

and prize! 
I march to the beat of thy heart, and the oriflamme of 

thine eyes. 
My falchion flashes thy smile, as I fight to the far-off 

goal— 
The star of love that burns on the battlement of thy 

soul. 

Queen! the bugle is blowing, the banners flutter and 

stream; 
Thy heart is beating such music, I fight as one in a 

dream. 

1 am blind; in my blood there is thunder; there is 

lightning around and above, 
I have cloven a cohort asunder, I swoon on the ramparts 

of love. 

73 



Six Fragments 

THUNDER AND LIGHTNING 

God sowed the lightning and there grew a soul. 

That soul is thou. 
God scattered thunder, and the thunder roll 

Is in thine utterance now. 

A NEST 

My heart is full of lovely words — 
Poor, little, helpless, huddled things; 
Like a nest full of singing birds, 
With broken wings. 

WITCHERY 

Thy lips bewitch the waves of light 
And make a red rose of a white; 
And silent tides of air transform 
Into a surging music-storm. 

74 



A HEART 

A crumbling crag, all crevices and caves, 
Where birds and bats have homes, and gods have 

graves. 

PARADOXES 

Like a white lily swaying in the wind, 
So rooted, yet so restless is thy mind; 
And thy high soul is like a burning star. 
So steadfast and so swift, so instant and so far. 

ARTIFICE 

Out of our sins 
Wise Love begins 
To make a soul. 
On sense of guilt 
A heart is built, 
Humble and whole. 



7S 



City of Granite Tower 



City of granite tower and granite spire, 

Of grim, indomitable granite will, 

Deep in your granite heart the cosmic fire 

Is burning still. 

Building immortal mountains for the world, 

New Sinais and new Pisgahs; and unfurled — 

Magnificently whirled 

By tempests of your pity, and your ire 

Like leaping flame athwart the heavens blown- 

I see the banners of your fierce desire 

To set white Freedom on a lofty throne, 

Made as of granite stone. 

And as by surges of your Northern Sea, 

Girt by your souls and swords impregnably; 

And gleaming bright, 

Crimson and white 

1^ 



Like surf that breaks upon your granite coasts, 

Tinged by a sunrise red, 

I see great hosts 

Of men and ghosts — 

The armies of your living and your dead. 

I hear the rhythmic pulsing ocean tread 

Of thousands of triumphant marching feet; 

I hear the thundering, tremendous beat 

Of thousands of heroic hearts whose blood 

Rolls like a crimson flood, 

Drawn by a splendid dream, 

Injustice to avenge, dishonour to redeem. 

ii 

From Ben Muick Dhui gaunt anu grey, 

From granite cairns of Lochnagar, 

From Buchan Ness 

And Dyce and Dess, 

From Cruden Bay 

And Craigievar, 

From moors of Dinnet and Braemar, 

From banks of Dee and banks of Don, 



From Callater and Loch Kinord, 
O'er purple heath and thymy sward, 
A surging sea of soul and sword, 
I see them flowing, flaming on. 

iii 

Boys of the moor, and of the field, 

Boys of the office, and the plough, 

From castle, college, manse, and bield, 

With hero's heart and dreamer's brow, 

I see them marching, marching now. 

I see them by the crumbling crown 

Of "Kings," and where the granite spires 

Of "Marischal" soar like altar fires 

Above the traffic of the town. 

In leafy lane and stony street. 

Their white and crimson surge I meet, 

A torrent flowing, flowing down 

To the rhythmic fall of marching feet. 



78 



IV 

I who have felt the North-Sea brine 

Upon my lips, whose eyes have seen 

The sunlight and the moonlight shine 

On the white streets of Aberdeen — 

I who have walked in scarlet gown 

Beneath the crumbling granite crown, 

Who still in fancy and in dreams 

Climb Lochnagar 

And hear afar 

The music of its mountain streams, 

Whose heart is still 

In every rill, 

Whose hopes wade knee-deep in the heather — 

Surely I know 

Where these boys go. 

My soul and theirs must go together, 

That mine their blood and mine their breath. 

Their fame, their shame, their life, their death. 



79 



Eugeny 

"Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being imperfect. In thy 
book all my members were written, which in continuance were 
fashioned, when as yet there were none of them." 

By what unseen and subtile bands 
Were you two lovers bound and wed? 
By tiny unborn baby-hands 
Your spirits were together led. 

Your meeting passions, seeming-blind 
Were in Life's prescient control; 
You looked —there was conceived a mind; 
You smiled — there was conceived a soul ; 

You kissed — and in the country dim 
That lies beyond the bounds of space, 
Foreshadowed was a baby's limb, 
Prefigured was a baby's face. 



80 



This was your love's supernal source, 
And this its mystic mundane goal, — 
The grip of the creative Force 
That needs a body for a soul. 

O wondrous is the eugeny. 
That finds a soul its avatar; 
God's baby-dream you could not see 
Drew you together from afar; 

And if perchance you lovers twain 
Had been by Fate asunder torn, 
Then had God's baby-dream been vain, 
A baby soul had died unborn. 



8i 



In Memory of 

Major William La Touche Congreve, V.C. 



"The best always befalls the best." 

— Quotation from letter of his tutor at Eton. 



Only the best can e'er the best befall, 

Unto the best, the worst must best reveal; 

And though he felt the rent Earth rock and reel, 

And through the loathly yellow poison-pall 

Heard thunder to reboant thunder call, 

And glimpsed the flickering of bloody steel, 

Yet Faith he had to know that wounds may heal, 

And Love he had that could transfigure all. 

To his own Spirit's Beauty. So his sword. 

Put to such terrible and poignant test 

In slaughterous tasks his human heart abhorred, 

Seemed in his eyes God's Justice manifest. 

And of all glorious fates, the fate seemed best 

To die for Freedom, England, and his Lord. 

82 



Wild Rose 



Wild rose, 

I 

Child rose, 

Why did you come so late? 

I had gleams of you, 

And dreams of you. 

And I could not choose but wait, 

Thro' desolate days. 

On lonely ways, 

In the desert-land of Fate. 

Child rose, 

Wild rose, 

Why did you come so late! 

Child rose, 

Wild rose, 

Why did you linger so? 



83 



I saw your face 

In a dreamland place 

Years and years ago, — 

Your ebon hair, 

And your forehead fair, 

And your deep dark eyes aglow. 

Wild rose, 

Child rose. 

Why did you linger so? 

Wild rose. 

Child rose, 

Altho' you never knew, 

In the dark alone, 

I have dug and sown, 

For the sake of the Dream of You; 

For your happy heart, 

I plied my art. 

And hoarded my morning dew. 

Child rose. 

Wild rose. 

Has my dream too late come true? 



84 



Child rose, 

Wild rose, 

Why did you hide so long? 

I could not live; 

I have nought to give 

But a little sheaf of song, 

And a crown of thought, 

That my brain has wrought, 

And a love that is great and strong. 

Wild rose, 

Child rose, 

Why did you hide so long? 

Wild rose, 
Child rose, 

Never too late for me; 
Love can redeem 
The tardy dream 
With immortality. 
You bring me youth, 
And joy, and truth, 
You give a soul to me- 



85 



Child rose, 

Wild rose, 

Never too late for me! 

Child rose. 

Wild rose, 

Up to your bower I climb, 

By the golden stair 

Of an olden prayer, 

By the tendril grip of rhyme, 

By the wings of love 

That can soar above 

The limits of space and time. 

Wild rose, 

Child rose. 

Up to your bower I climb. 

Wild rose. 

Child rose, 

I bring to you as is meet. 

All I have done. 



86 



And lost and won, 

Victory and defeat; 

You were the goal 

Of my fighting soul, 

The blood of my heart's best beat. 

Child rose, 

Wild rose, 

I lay my all at your feet. 

Nay, child rose, 

Wild rose, 

Years are between us twain. 

You have had days 

Of joy and praise, 

/ have had years of pain, 

And the bud of you, 

With its morning dew, 

I can never on earth attain. 

Wild rose. 

Child rose. 

Years are between us twain. 



87 



Wild rose, 

Child rose, 

Into the dark I go ; 

But the dark will shine 

With these eyes of thine, — 

Will shine and blossom and glow; 

The bud of thee, 

Immortally, 

Deep in my heart will grow. 

Wild rose, 

Child rose, 

Into the dark I go! 



88 



"How Little Seem the Joys and Fears" 

"He has placed the world in man's heart" (Ecclesiastes). 
"War' nicht das Auge scnnenhaft wie konnt es daan das Licht 
crblicken." 

How little seem the ioys and fears 

We shun or chase, 

How foolish seem our fevered years 

Of smiles and tears, 

Beside the music of the spheres 

And the high harmonies of Space! 

Natheless the spinning daedal world, 
Floats in the current of our veins; 
Within our souls the stars are whirled; 
We breed the planets in our brains. 
From us all Being has its birth, 
Of all things is our being spun; 
In us are Heaven, and Hell, and Earth, 
And every star, and every sun. 

89 



Daring 

I DARE not worship Love, whose warm hands hold 

The true immortal worth of mortal breath, 

And every deathless beauty this side death. 

And seeds wherein are hidden manifold 

Spring's promise, summer's glory, autumn's gold — 

I dare not, for so many voices say, 

"I am the Mighty Love thou must obey — 

The Love thy dreams foreshadowed, and foretold." 

I thirst for love, and yet I dare not slake 
My thirst at his cool fountain's singing flow; 
I long to love, and yet I dare not stake 
Eternal happiness upon one throw; 
I dare not, nay, I dare for thy sweet sake; 
Then prithee love me who have loved thee so! 



90 



Death, the Child 

Once in pain I reviled 

The greybeard Death 

Who grudged me breath, 

And lo, from the Tomb of Space, 

He came to my torture-place — 

Came and smiled; 

O God, and he had the hands, and the face, 

The tender limbs, and the slender grace, 

And the heart of a child. 

Death of the dimpled hands, death of the rosy cheek, 
Wilt give us all we have lost, and all that we vainly 

seek. 
Seeds of unripened hopes thy fingers hold. 
Wilt quicken the dead. 
To white and red, 
And green and gold, 

91 



And flickering passion will flame, and faded promise 

unfold. 
What though our careworn lives may bitter and barren 

be — 
Bitter and cold, 
Barren and old, 
As the tides of an Arctic sea? 
What matter! Thy heart is young and bold. 

Thy wings are strong and free. 
And health, and wisdom, and wonder arc doled 
By thy childish charity — 
Wisdom, and Wonder, and gleams 
Of a glory new. 
Rest, and Sleep, and Dreams, 
And a Garden drenched with dew; 
Till Life in verity seems 
But a mist that thy Smile comes through. 

Once I gazed on Death, and he looked in my face and 

smiled; 
And now I fear him not, for he is only a child. 



92 



IWedding Ode 

To A Poetess 



Like swans on an enchanted lake 
Your dreamy days have drifted by; 
Now, lovely, dreamy Lady wake, 
A Glory lightens in the sky! 
The empyrean dome above 
Is burning, blinding sapphire blue; 
Your misty morning dream of love 
Is now a dream come true. 

ii 

We two have wandered hand in hand 
In merry moonlit fairyland ; 
We two have culled Parnassus thyme 
Above the clouds on peaks sublime; 

93 



But far more bright 

Than fairy-light 

This love that dawns upon your eyes, 

And higher than Parnassus height 

The summit of your Paradise. 

No dream is this — this orb of fire, 

This splendid peak of white Desire. 

iii 

Your dream of Love takes human form, 
And human heart, and human speech, 
And runs to you, alive and warm, 
With hands your living hands can reach; 
And every other dream grows dim. 
He hath such light and life in him. 

ly 

Yet mid the glory flicker gleams 
Of other dreams 
Of olden days; 
And misty things 



94 



With rainbow wings 
Still dance adown your sunlit ways; 
Love's living heart, so warm and deep, 
A million million dreams can keep, 
And all fair dreams you ever knew 
Still from Love's eyes may smile to you. 



O be a poet-dreamer still. 

With heart and will 

Athrob, athrill, 

^olian harps in Beauty's breath, 

Until at last God's Love fulfil 

All dreams of Life in the dream of Death, 

Still dream; still let thy spirit change. 

Like light and shadow on the sea! 

Still keep existence fresh and strange 

With Wonder and with Mystery. 



95 



The Heart of a Child 

Budding her dreams and budding her bosom, 
Yet, betimes, when she smiled, 

I saw the heart of the Woman blossom 
Red in the heart of the Child. 



96 



Ode of Welcome to Queen Alexandra 

On a Visit to Aberdeen on the Occasion of the 
quatercentenary of aberdeen university 

Mother of the Land, 

Around thy throne the hearts of England stand 
Waiting thy will. And since thou art our Queen, 
And since thy life has moved in lovely ways. 
The granite loyalty of Aberdeen 
Greets thee with love and reverence and praise; 
And boasts that these great battlements of stone 
Are buttresses and bulwarks of thy throne, 
For thou art wise, and they are Wisdom's fort; 
And thou art true, and they are Truth's domain; 
And thou art kind, and they are Healing's Court, 
Where Love and Pity reign : 

Thou art the symbol of all things we seek, too lofty to 

attain. 

97 



Welcome, thrice welcome to our granite town, 
Thou who hast made the burden of a crown 
Burn like a halo, kindle like a star — 
Welcome, thrice Welcome! In the days afar 
The Queen who joined the Thistle and the Rose, 
Making firm friends of foes. 
And Mary Queen of Scots, and Her of Guise 
Rode down these streets, under admiring eyes. 
But never Queen so fair and loved as thou 
Who comest to join in our rejoicings now. 

"Welcome, thrice welcome. Queen most fair and kind! 
Welcome, thrice welcome!" sighs the autumn wind. 
"Welcome, thrice welcome!" chants the Northern Sea. 
And both come singing from thy home to thee — 
We are one in sea and wind as one in heart. 
And thou at once our Queen and kindred art; 
Welcome, thrice welcome to our Aberdeen! 
Welcome, beloved Queen I 



98 



Death's Lover 



Amorous Lover of Death am I— 

Lover! Lover! — 
All that is holy, and hidden and high, 

He will discover. 
Lover of solemn Death am I, 

Lover! Lover! 

Fervent Singer of Death am I — 

Singer! Singer! — 
Subtile as dew, and soft as a sigh, 

Comes the dream-bringerl 
Singer of silent Death am I, 

Singer! Singer! 

Patient Wooer of Death am I — 

Wooer! Wooer! — 
He knows no guile, and he speaki no lie, 

99 



He treads the earth, and he wings the sky, 

Dreamer and Doer, 
Wooer of wonderful Death am I, 

Wooer! Wooer! 

Passionate Poet of Death am I — 

Poet! Poet!— 
Peace is his gift and by and by 

He will bestow it. 
Poet of beautiful Death am I, 

Poet! Poet! 



100 



Homeland 



Where is thy homeland, 

Flowerland or foamland? 

Parkland, 

Or larkland, 

Where wert thou born? 

Was it some farland? 

Cloudland or starland? 

Was it an isle at the Gates of the Morn? 

Where is thy homeland, 

Flowerland or foamland? 

Turf-land, 

Or surf-land, 

Where didst thou rise? 

All my soul's clod-land 

Grows to a God-land, 

Under the spell of thy voice and thine eyes. 

lOI 



Where is thy homeland, 

Flowerland or foamland? 

Bud-land, 

Or scud-land, 

Where didst thou spring? 

All my heart's dune land * 

Grows to a moonland. 

Seeing thy beauty and hearing thee sing. 



1 02 



In Memory of a Young Airman 

Brown hair, brown brow, brown throat, like bronze 

Sculptured by a Praxiteles, 
And hazel eyes, like summer dawns, 

Lighting the isles of Southern seas. 

He seemed like some great poet's dream 
Of some white lovely Grecian god — 

Adonis, with young eyes agleam; 
Or Herakles, with shoulders broad. 

Or Hermes, with his winged feet 

Flying on messages divine; 
Or Ganymede, the stripling sweet, 

Pouring the gods their ruby wine; 

Or Hyacinthus, ere the wound 
Turned him to flowers in Zephir's arms; 

Or tall Narcissus, ere he swooned 

From love of his own mirrored charms. 



103 



Yet, though his beauty and his grace 
Were as the dreams of Grecian art, 

'Twas England's soul illumed his face, 
'Twas England blossomed in his heart. 

And England, England, England lit 
His eyes with loving, filial joy; 

He went and gave his life for it. 
This happy-hearted English boy. 

And gave it not as one might lay 

A gift upon an altar high; 
He did not kneel, he did not pray; 

Gaily he sallied forth to die. 

He had nor gods, nor marble fanes. 
He had no pious faith forsooth. 

Save English lawns, and English lanes. 
And English homes, and English truth. 

England, his Merrie England, stood 

For all things high, and all things free; 
104 



For all things wise, and all things good ; 
For Justice and for Liberty, 

So he faced peril with a jest, 
And with a smile he paid the price. 

England was worthy England's best, 
England was worth all sacrifice. 

There was such laughter in his breath, 

He was so young, and strong, and straight, 

His beauty made a mock of death 
His joyance had no place for hate. 

He went as warrior of the air. 
Above him were the sun and stars, 

And rosy clouds, and under there 
The trenches' livid weals and scars; 

The bloody fangs of barbed wire, 
The muddy craters choked with dead, 

The cannon belching smoke and fire. 
The crests of battle breaking red. 



105 



He saw the glint of steel below, 
The thunder of the guns he heard; 

But what to him were death and woe! 
He only was a boy, a bird — 

A boy on high adventure bent. 

An eagle soaring to the blue; 
Up to the radiant sun he went, 

Through the bright fields of air he flew. 

He loosed his bolt. The bright death sped 
Spinning like an Ithuriel's spear, 

Earth spluttered red around the dead. 
Yet felt he neither wrath nor fear. 

For he was messenger of Fate, 
Merely a boy, a bird, a Doom, 

And neither doubt, nor fear, nor hate 
Within his boyish heart had room. 

There came a blizzard through the skies, 

A shrieking gust of shrapnel rain; 
1 06 



A blinding mist came o'er his eyes, 
He felt a sudden throb of pain; 

Then peace. With broken wings he lay 
Upon the ground. But still meseems 

The climbing spirit cleaves its way, 
With the white wings of happy dreams. 

And still meseems the boundless force, 
The beauty and the love set free 

From the gross flesh, will run its course 
Through aeons of Eternity; — 

Unspoilt, unspent, will reach its aim, 
And from the dead will spring perchance 

A Europe purged by steel and flame — 
A nobler England, nobler France. 

Yea, from his fame as white as snow, 

And from his sacrificial blood, 
The lilies of new France will grow 

The roses of new England bud. 



107 



The Resurrection of a Dream 

'TWAS buried deep : 
I did not weep ; 
I had forgot. 

But Love did not forget to keep 
What Love had wrought; 
And when you spake, — 
Wan, half-awake, 
Dim as a daylight flame. 
Up from my Memory's oubliette, the old Dream softly 

came. 

I cried, *'0 shrunken form! 
O wrinkled mummy face! 
Once thou wert rosy- warm, 
And fair, and full of grace; 
Now art a thing to gibe at in the sun, 
To mock and shun, 
io8 



Go back and dream in thy cold dwelling-place, 
Go back and sleep, 
Down in thy dungeon deep ! 
Go back!" I cried, "for all my dreams are done!" 

Sheeted in shame, 

With chin-clothes of despair, 

Shambling along it came, 

All tottering and lame. 

Up to the upper air; 

And, as a soul that perishes with drouth 

Might stoop to drink 

At a fountain's brink 

With famished mouth. 

So knelt and drank it of your beauty there. 

— O wonder! — as it gazed it grew 

Like a faint rose refreshed with dew 

Most sweet and fresh. 

Spirit and flesh, 

With leaping heart, and eyes of blue; 

And in its mouth, and brow, and hair, 



109 



Your mouth, and brow, and hair, I knew; 

And suddenly I was aware 

That ye were one, not two : 

You were the Dream of all things fair, 

You were my Dream, my Dream was you; 

You were the answer to my prayers, 

You were my Dream of Love come true. 



no 



The Blue Bird 

Symbol of Happiness 

I SOUGHT the Blue Bird near and far, 

In verdant woods, and azure skies, 

On purple peaks of Paradise, 

In golden gardens of a star; 

But in your eyes 

It flits, and flies, 

And in your heart its nestings are — 

So near, so far. 

Like a wild lark that longs for space, 

It beats and beats against the blue 

Of your bright eyes, then flutters through 

Your eyelids, and lights up your face, 

As all the true 

Warm love of you 

Comes flying to my love's embrace, 

Out of blue space. 

Ill 



To J. F. White (Art Critic) When Dying 

Since thou hast beauty all life long, 
In sun and shade, 

Followed, and worshipped, and obeyed, 
Beauty will make thy spirit strong 
And unafraid. 

Beauty will glorify the gloom. 
Beauty will show the unborn light 
. Leaping within the laden womb 
Of weary night, 

Beauty will make the silence song, 
Beauty will make the darkness bright 

Hast thou not heard the loving Heart 
Whose music passes Music's art? 
Hast thou not seen a white Hand flit 
Across the darkness, lighting it? 
Peace surely waits beyond the pain, 

112 



^d calm beyond the troubled bar; 
We must believe that death is good, 
We blossoms of a dying star. 
And surely He is kind and wise, 
Who made such Beauty for thine eyes. 

We watched thee sow, we watched thee reap 
Wisdom and Honour day by day, 
And now when comes white-lidded Sleep 
To lead thee down the Lonely Way, 
We will not sigh, we will not weep, 
For Beauty's thoughts are wise and deep. 

What though the night be dark and dumb? 

Out of the night 

Will issue light, 

And song will from the silence come. 

So lie at rest 

On Beauty's breast, 

Who maketh Beauty knoweth best. 



"3 



Pan's Flute 

My heart's whole love in thy white hand I lay, 
Irrevocably as befits the deed, 
Undoubtingly, for surely Love decreed 
Complete surrender, and I must obey. 
Sweet Lady, do not throw the love away; 
There may be roses in a wrinkled seed. 
And Pan drew music from a broken reed 
Till all the world danced round to hear him play. 

Imprisoned in my passion's thorny fruit 

A million crimson roses crumpled lie; 

And though my melancholy heart be mute, 

Touch it and lyric voices will reply. 

Make of the hollow reed a magic lute, 

To tremble with thy breath, and sing, and sigh. 



114 



The "Titanic" 

(An Ode of Immortality) 



O, RIBBED and riveted with iron and steel, 
Cuirassed and byrnied, breathing smoke and flame, 
Cleaving the billows with her monstrous keel, 
A Titan challenging the gods she came! 
The surf piled lilies round her eager prow, 
The wind made music through her mighty spars, 
Her hot heart thudded, thundered, and her brow 
Had converse with the stars. 

ii 

What phantoms of what famous ships of old 

Came to convoy 

Her freight of joy, 

Her beauty, and her splendour, o'er the main! 



Here rocked the weather-beaten barques of Troy 
Beside the ghostly galleons of Spain; 
And there the Argo, with her fleece of gold, 
Followed the Mayflower with her pilgrims bold; 
And yonder, with her motley tattered crew, 
Santa Maria o'er the surges flew 
On buoyant wing 

While Viking warriors, with eyes of blue, 
Lay on their oars and wondered at the Thing, — 
At the prodigious panoply of steel, 
The pounding rods, the whirling blades, the invulner- 
able keel. 

Natheless, old Charon, paddling in his boat. 
Smiled, and the laughter rattled in his throat. 

iii 

Why does Death's laughter jangle in the dark? 
What can he do against so brave a barque? 
Louder than any laughter is her speech: 
Ten thousand miles her utterance can reach: 
ii6 



And like ten thousand Argus eyes agaze 
Her mast lights glimmer and her portholes blaze. 
So mightily her turbines whirl and whir, 
Great cables she can snap like gossamer, 
And tempests move her, but as breathings stir 
The branches of a forest. Who would seek 
To grapple with the giant strength of her 
Must have for battle-axe a mountain spur, 
Must have a poniard like a mountain peak. 

iv 

Yea, but an icy mountain is unloosed : 
Riding the sea, it cometh to the joust, 
Reckless and ruthless, arrogant and proud, 
Clad in white armour, visored with a cloud. 
No bugles blow, no trumpets blare, 
No oriflammes and pennons flare. 
No heralds at the lists proclaim 
The great grim Arctic giant's name; 
But pitiless, and gaunt, and white, 
It tilts in silence through the night. 

117 



O sea! O wind! 

Can God be blind! 

Crash! we can hear its great spear gride, 

Gashing the vessel's iron side! 



Ah! woe is me! A host of men must die, 

A host of men must leave the April sky. 

The lush green meadows, and the budding trees. 

The little children climbing on their knees. 

Glorious hopes, and golden memories. 

And yet to great and good things seemed they born, 

For every morn 

The sun came through the gateways of the East 

To lackey at their feast. 

And they had made the tempests, and the waves, 

And steel and steam, 

And fire and dream, 

Their feudatories, and their slaves. 

Why should they lie now in such lonely graves? 

Why did inexorable Fate ordain 

ii8 



That heart and brain 

Should perish in this moaning pool of pain, 
This weltering wailing maelstrom, where Despair 
Gripped faith and Courage by the throat and hair. 
O white cold faces, staring at the sky. 
Did Love of God not hear you cry? 
O poor blind faces pillowed on the ooze 
Why did God choose 
That you should tortured die? 

Is the Power of God a Dream? Is the Love of God 

a Lie? 

vi 

We are but puppets of the mighty Powers 

That round the planets, and that light the stars. 

Time maketh dust of palaces and towers. 

Of faces and of flowers; 

Death all our loveliness and beauty mars. 

The great fire-hearted world grows red and wroth, 

And shrivels up a city like a moth; 

It dribbles down its beard in dotard ire, 

And buries half a nation in a mire; 

119 



It twitches with a palsy, and a town 

Is shaken down. 

Now from the Pole 

The glaciers roll 

And bray and grind the mountains into mud; 

Now from the deep, 

Where the oozes creep, 

New mountains bud. 

Change, change, for ever change, death, and decay; 

All lovely things are born only to pass away. 

vii 

And yet the Soul in whom all beings are 

Discerns so deep, foresees so far. 

He plans the meadows of a star 

^ons before the star is made, 

And in the fire 

He moulds to his desire 

The tiny blossom and the tender blade. 

The deeper meaning of these woes 

No mortal knows, 

1 20 



Yet in one web the universe is spun, 

Out of the Infinite the finite grows, 

Shadow and sun 

Are woven in one, 

And every star is needful for a rose. 



Vlll 



Behold! the hands of Fate, 

Wise and deliberate, 
Most exquisite in art, most prodigal of power. 

Shaped to a strange device 

The murderous bit of ice 
Of a million starry flakes, each perfect as a flower. 

Hammering flake to flake 

Simply for Beauty's sake. 
And if the berg was made with so much loving care, 
The end was surely good, the purpose surely fair. 



121 



And we have glimpsed a good, 

A meaning issuing thence, 

Half-seen, half-understood. 

Immortal and immense, — 

For we have seen poor mortals die 

As only the immortal durst; 

And we have heard the deathless cry — 

"Women and children first!" 
"Women and children first!" The whole world hears; 
The cry reverberates adown the years 

A trumpet blast, a trumpet call, 

So vibrant that the prison-wall 

That bars the vision of Humanity 

Sags, totters to its fall, — 

So brave and fearless that our spirits see 

The Love behind it all. 
Yea, in spite of glutted Death we feel 
That mightier than the Titan's mighty keel, 
Than whirling blade, and flashing piston-rod, 
Is Courage leaning on the Love of God. 

122 



Nor are they dead who lie asleep 

In the ocean's deep. 

Their eyelids small as lily-leaves 

Cannot conceal a single star, 

For all the things the eye perceives 

Behind the eyelid-curtain are. 

No changes of the carnal sight 

Can blind or blight 

The living soul, 

Which is the darkness, and the light, 

And in itself contains the w^hole — 

Both earth belov^^, 

And stars above, 

And weal, and woe, 

And hate, and love. 

xi 

What is life but a drop 

In an infinite ocean? 

E'en though the pulses may stop, 

Yet, with unceasing motion, 

123 



From the Eternal Soul 
The mightier currents roll; 

Life is merely a passing phase of a great Immortal 

whole. 
Meadows and trees, 
Rivers and seas, 
Health and disease, 
Good and ill, 
Are divers keys 
In the harmonies 
Of the Master Will, 
And the beating heart 
Plays its part 
And sounds, and is still. 



Xll 

But never can silent death, 
Making their laughter mute. 
Kissing away their breath. 
Blighting blossom and fruit, — 
Never can silent death 
124 



Mar, and destroy, and break. 

Or silence the soul of love, if the soul of love awake. 
Love, and the things of Love — Beauty, and Wisdom, 

and Peace, 
Never grow dim and dumb, never darken and cease. 

Even as Death's crooked hand 
Twitches the chords of fear. 
Our hearts shall understand 
How every pain was planned. 
Our souls shall hear 
How harmonies control 
At once the thunder's roll, 
And the rounding of a tear, 

xiii 

Now is the carnate soul 
Conscious of body and face. 
Conscious of joy or disgrace; 
Then shall its wider senses embrace 
And compass the whole, 

I2S 



The rest and the riot, 

The song and the quiet, 

The hearing and seeing, 

The infinite being, 

The light and the music of measureless Space! 



126 



An Extravaganza 

Her eyes are dim, yet also bright 
And wide-awake, yet natheless dreaming, 

Like moonbeams on a summer night, 
Athro* a nimbus softly streaming, 

Or morning's liberating light, 
The blind unhappy dark redeeming. 

Her eyes are bright, yet also dim, 
As though with joy they had been weeping, 

The lashes, broidering the brim. 

Have tiny teardrops in their keeping. 

And rainbows arch from rim to rim. 
And through the arch stars are peeping. 

O eyes so bright, so dim, so fair, 

Sunlight and moonlight intertwining. 

Weeping and laughter, pride and prayer, 
Within your lily lids enshrining, 



127 



Your beauty fills me with despair, 
You blind me, blind me with your shining. 

You blind me like the lissom blade 
Of sudden summer-lightning flashes, 

Your witchery makes my heart afraid, 
Your beauty baffles and abashes; 

I seek a dewy ambuscade 

In the lilied boscage of your lashes. 

Yet some day, when the lightnings dart 
Between the lilies of my cover, 

Out of my ambush I will start 
And leap the eyelids as a lover; 

And secret pathways to thy heart 
My fervid passion will discover. 



128 



The Nile 

How did He fashion it, He who made it — 

This mysterious dreamy land, 
Here an oasis with palms to shade it, 

Here a desert of tawny sand? 

How did He fashion it, how did He make it — 
This enchanted land of the Nile? 

With a thunder-peal or a sigh did He make it? 
A lightning flash, or a loving smile? 

^ons ago, in dreams He saw it, 

Lying in unborn beauty afar; 
iEons long He toiled to draw it, 

Out of the core of a burning star. 

Terrace by terrace, He built the mountains 
Out of the silt of the ancient sea; 

Cloudlet by cloudlet. He made the fountains 
To feed the river that was to be. 



129 



He made the Nile; He filled and fraught it 
With golden loads of a magic mire; 

He moulded the land, he forged and wrought it, 
Now by earthquake, and now by fire. 

Age by age He brought to prepare it, 
A sculptor's skill, and a painter's art, 

Then, He thought in His love to share it, 
And made a burning and beating heart. 

He made thy heart that His heart might fill it 
With dreams of beauty that He had made; 

He made thy soul that His Art might thrill it 
With palm, and lotus, and sun, and shade. 

And I who watch thee as thou art dreaming 
The dream of the mind that made the whole, 

Discern His love in thy beauty gleaming, 
In thy fair spirit discern His soul, 

And know to what end His Art has striven 
In the desert below, and the sky above. — 
130 



Know that the beauty of earth is given 
To the heart of man by the Hand of Love. 

Praise, O praise to the Artist Giver, 

Who made the earth, and the sky, and the sea, 
And the lovely dream of the flowing river, 

And the lovelier living dream of thee. 

Here upon earth there is no abiding, 

Still like the Nile life floweth on. 
And still our lives are floating, and gliding, 

Into the twilight, out of the dawn. 

Yet in life can be no forgetting 

Of the desert's peace, of the river's calm, 

Of thy lips and eyes in their lovely setting 
Of maize, and lotus, and corn, and palm. 



131 



A Pastel 

Her hazel eyes with sweetness are abrim, 
Like heather honey in an arnber jar; 
And in the lucent sweetness seems to swim 
A dream of passion like a burning star. 

Her breasts are like two clusters of white may 
In a blue-veined alabaster bowl, — 
And, shaken by her heart's wild beating, spray 
A drench of dew upon my dusty soul. 

Her tresses are like flames that flicker and flare 
And smoulder in a smift of gossamer spun; 
I kindle my dead heart and spirit there 
As one might kindle torches at the sun. 



13a 



Ski Song 



Fleet! Fleet! 

Sweet! Sweet! 

Fleet! Fleet! 

Fair! Fair! 

Sweet and fleet, have you wings or feet? 

Are you made of earth, are you made of air? 

Across the snow 

I watch you go, 

Like a flying bird, like a falling star; 

Prithee say, 

As you dart away. 

Whether a body or soul you are. 



133 



On the Death of John Davidson 



Sad soul by fickle Fortune spurned, 

Sad soul that burned, 

And flickered in the dark, 

Like a wind-troubled spark, 

Had God but given thee a little rest 

And sheltered thee a time to burn thy best, 

We seeing thee afar 

Had known thee as a star 

Upon His Breast. 

But Pain, 

Like wintry rain, 

Smothered thy fire with smoke; 

Care 

Drove thee to Despair 

Until thy proud heart broke, — 

134 



Not trodden in the winepress into wine, 
By the white feet of Sorrow and Desire, 
But trampled by the cloven hooves of swine 
A.nd cloven feet of devils in the mire. 

ii 

O bitter smoke to come from such a flame! 

O sordid ending of such dreams of fame! 

O lowly ending of so high an aim! 

Great! wert thou great, we know not, only know 

That thou wert great in hope, and great in woe, 

Too high to slumber in a grave so low, 

Too rich to be compelled thro' lack of gold 

To toil at shoddy — to be bought and sold 

In the world's market; strong enough to die 

Rather than living low to live a lie. 

iii 

Would it have braver been to slay thine art, 
And on the world to crucify thy heart, — 
To work at lowly labour for thy bread, 



135 



Smiling, as brave men do, amid thy dead, 

Letting none know the pain 

Of a hope loved in vain, 

Of a great thought unsaid? 

Would it have braver been to v^ait for Death 

Rather than call him with impatient breath? 

Would it have braver been? Is it so brave 

To live when love of life is in the grave, — 

To live without a soul? Is It worth while 

To make pretence of life, and talk, and smile, — 

Is it so brave? 

iv 

What man may judge? We know that thou wert 

strong, 
With a heart full of song 
And courage high. 

It was no coward who went forth to die. 
But one who bravely with despair had fought, 
Who in the darkness noble things had wrought 
In dream and thought; — 
One who had loved the earth, and sea, and sky; 
136 



It was a Poet who went forth to die. 

And O, what faith was thine to go alone 

Into the dark unknown; 

What splendid faith was thine to woo such Sleep, 

Like a wounded thing to creep 

Into the deep, 

And close thy lids forever on the sun, 

Thy "labour ended and thy journey done!" 

Thy faith in death was faith in life meseems, 

Thy faith in sleep was faith in lovely dreams. 

And thy despair 

Was but a prayer 

To the Love that pardons and redeems. 



137 



Lady Moonlight 

Lady Moonlight, so I deem thee, 
For I think some summer night 

God amid the stars did dream thee, 
Mystical, and pure, and white. 

Yea, and Moonlight is the sunlight — 

The reflection of a star, 
And all sunlight is the One Light 

Of the Love that burns afar. 

Lady Moonlight, Sunlight, Starlight, 

Howsoever fair thou be, 
Fairer is the holy far light 

That with love illumines thee. 



138 



The Isle of Song 

Wan Memories, with patient widow faces, 
Looked calmly backwards thro' the withered years, 
And smiled to find, like dew, in distant places, 
Forgotten tears. 

And in the shadowy grove of cypress- trees, 
With ashes on their garments and their hair, 
I found a crowd of Sorrows on their knees 
Before Despair. 

Also, I saw a Dream with misty face. 
And heavy languid eyelids lily-white. 
Who made a mockery of Time and Space 
By day and night. 

And Hope I met, with eyes so blue and blind 
They could discern the fruit within the pod. 
And in the darkness of the world could find 
The Love of God. 



139 



A Bee 



You take my heart 
And drain it dry, 
You break my heart 
And off you fly; 

You drain my heart 

And off you flit, 

You break my heart, 

What matters it? 
Come, take and break my heart's red cup! 
Come, drain its love! Come, drink it up! 



140 



A Hybrid 



I SEND her only lilies, 
No red amid the white, 
For all the pallid flowers, 
Ablushing with delight. 

Acquire a double beauty; 
And every blossom grows. 
Like her sweet soul and body, 
A lily in a rose. 



141 



A Lie 

The higher that our spirits climb, 

The more does Truth appear a lie, 

The more do things of Space and Time 

Appear a rainbow in the sky — 

A frail illusion of the sun 

That fades and perishes when won — 

Merely a rainbow, red and blue, 
A thing the birds go flying through; 
Yet on the rainbow's coloured arch 
(Only perhaps six inches broad) 
Armies of Hopes and Dreams can march 
Up to the very Heart of God. 

Be truth a lie, 
Yet far and high. 

In search of truth we still will fly; 
142 



For even on a rainbow rim 

We have a shining path to Him, 

So far behind, so high above, 

Whose thoughts are truth, whose deeds are love. 



143 



But 



But if you have not met and kissed 
Your lonely Love's Beloved One, 

Your heart's a rosebud in a mist 
That has not known the sun. 

And though the world be glad and loud 
With all the singing joy of June, 

Your soul's a lily in a cloud 
That has not seen the moon. 



144 



"Integer Vitae 



> > 



He whose incorrigible Hope redeems 
Banal to-days with beautiful to-morrows, 

Who sows the fallow dust with futile dreams, 
Will harvest only sorrows; 

And he who spends the sunny days of youth 
Bent double over Reason's rusty shares 

Will harvest only stacks of stubbly truth 
And sheaves of golden tares; 

But he who lives life plenary and whole — 
Labour and laughter, loveliness and song — 

With dreams and visions in his inner soul 
Speeding the plough along. 

He who incarnates love in lovely deeds, 
Whose dreams in charity their wings employ, 

Will fill Time's furrows with immortal seeds 
And reap eternal joy. 

145 



Face Aflower 

Face aflower and soul aflame, 
Into my darkness the dancing came, 
And my heart cried out and my body yearned. 
And the whole world bourgeoned and danced and 

burned, 
And I saw white limbs of the Morning stir 
As the darkness flowered and flamed with her. 



146 



A Word 



You take a word, 
And give it wings ; 

It grows a bird, 
And soars and sings; 

And by your art, 
You make a scroll, 

A beating heart, 
A living soul. 



147 



Memory 



Night may forget the day, 
The roses and the dew, 

And yet my heart alway, 
Lady, remembers you. 

Day may forget the night, 
Forget both moon and star. 

Yet deathless, dark or light, 
Your memories are! 



[48 



To a Son on the Death of his Mother 

O HAPPY mother, happy son, 

Who — twain in one — 

For half a hundred years have grown 

Like root and fruit, like branch and stem, 

With the same surgent sap in them, — 

I, who am blown, 

Alone, 

Along the ledges of precipitous Space, 

Who for eight lustrums have not known 

A mother's face, 

Do envy you 

That kinship true, 

That mother-son embrace. 

That sympathy of soul in unity of race. 

My body fiercely clings 
To life, to star, to tree, 



149 



To old material mortal things 

I touch, and hear, and see. 

I nurse my feeble breath, 

Dreading the reckless death 

Who sets man's spirit free; — 

Dreading the depth and height, 

The darkness and the light 

Of lonely fathomless infinity. 

But you will go unfearingly to die, 

Will tear the trammels of your body ofiP, 

And like a tawdry tattered garment doff 

The earth and sky. 

Dreading no limbo desolate and dumb, 

For through the darkness will your mother come. 



ISO 



Spring and Summer 

To R. S. 



O, Spring and Summer meet 
Within thy heart to-day, 
And Spring is fresh and sweet, 
With dainty, dancing feet, 
And lips that laugh alway. 

And Summer is serene, 
Mature and debonnaire. 
And Cometh like a queen, 
Attired in gold and green. 
With roses in her hair. 

They meet; they curtsy low — 
Grave Summer, laughing Spring, 
Then hand in hand they go, 

151 



To gather and to sow, 
To labour and to sing. 



O Spring can scatter yet 
The seeds your hopes desire- 
Daisy and mignonette, 
Lily and violet, 
And rose with heart of fire. 



And Summer can fulfil, 
From bud to perfect bloom. 
Whatever flower you will. 
Of meadow or of hill, 
Of sunlight or of gloom. 



Thy life is thine to make, 

O happy, happy thou! 

What seeds will Springtime take? 

What buds will Summer wake? 

'Tis thine to order now. 



152 



Both Spring and Summer wait 
Thy bidding and decree; 
Thou hast the seeds of Fate, 
The infinite estate 
Of all eternity. 



153 



To a Lady who Sent Verses to Correct 
Published in "Punch" 

Erratic the metre, 
And errant the rhyme; 
The form might be neater, 
And feater the time. 
And yet thy sweet verses could hardly be sweeter, 
Though polished the metre. 
And perfect the rhyme. 

I will not correct them 
As though they were prose, 
To carve and dissect them 
Were rending a rose. 
Thy charm and thy beauty preserve and protect them, 
I will not correct them 
As if they were prose. 



154 



"I Have Found Her" 

In the living world I have found her, found her, 
For whom I have waited a whole life long; 
Dreams and Desires go dancing round her, 
Hopes and Visions about her throng. 

In the living world I have found her, found her — 
Gracious, and wise, and tall, and strong; 
I have knelt at her feet, I have throned and crowned 

her 
With love, and music, and beauty, and song. 
In the living world I have found her, found her, 
For whom I have hungered a whole life long. 



155 



A Miracle 



is6 



Life takes some dust, 

A little rust, 

A crust 

Of bread. 

And makes a must — 

Blood hot and red; — 

And joy, and pain, and love, and lust. 

Rise from the dead. 



To a Lady in the Reading-Room of the British 

Museum 



What are you doing there mid the dust, 

You that are made of the sunlight and dew, 

What are you doing? 

Reading? Reviewing? 

Wearing out eyes of impossible blue, 

Wasting a heart that the world should be wooing, 

Wasting a heart that is tender and true. 

What are you doing? 

Reading? Reviewing? 

Japanese? Volpauk? Hebrew? Hindoo? 



11 



What do you seek in that catacomb there, 
Lined with a million of folios dead? 



^57 



What are you finding 

Hid in the binding, 

You with the lips of geranium red? 

What are you harvesting? What are you grinding? 

What are you trying to put in your head? 

What are you finding 

Hid in the binding? 

Were it not better to frivol instead? 



Ill 



What are you studying? Science? Theology? 

Botany? History? Cookery? Art? 

Have you been choosing 

Something amusing, 

Fin de siecle, and piquant, and smart? 

Are you a sermon or sonnet perusing? 

Feed you your mind, or your soul, or your heart? 

Have you been choosing 

Something amusing? 

Is it Corelli? Is it Descartes? 

158 



IV 

Are you the Goddess Pallas Athena, 

Goddess of Wisdom, stately and wise? 

Have you, I wonder, 

Lightning and thunder 

Stored in your bosom and hid in your eyes? 

Out of the brow of great Zeus cleft asunder. 

Did you one morning with shouting arise? 

Have you, I wonder. 

Lightning and thunder 

Brought from the arsenal vault of the skies? 



Fair necromancer, with your warm beauty 

You can awaken the dead and the dumb; 

Fair necromancer. 

Soldier and dancer 

Step to your heart like the beat of a drum; 

Emperor, prophet, singer, romancer 

Talk till the dome and the galleries hum; 

159 



Fair necromancer, 
Singer and dancer, 
Poet and priest, at your beckoning come. 



VI 



By your warm wonder bewitched, and awakened, 

All the dead hearts of the universe leap; 

Lo, with a holloa. 

Pan and Apollo 

Come from Time's oubliette dusky and deep; 

Odin, and Thor, and Eurydice follow; 

Out of a cupboard the leprechaun peep; 

Lo, with a holloa, 

Pan and Apollo, 

Odin, and Isis, arise from their sleep! 



Vll 



Dozens of passionate amorous poets 

Dance to your heart on the dusty old shelves! 

i6o 



Out of the pages, 

Brown with the ages, 

March mighty warriors gripping their helves, 

Teachers, and preachers, and singers, and sages, 

Commonplace people the same as ourselves. 

Out of the pages. 

Brown with the ages, 

Flutter forth also the fairies and elves. 



Vlll 



Come all the dreams of the beautiful dreamers, 

All the fair dreams that their dreamers outlast, 

All the romances, 

All the fair fancies. 

Fairy-tale visions, and hopes of the past. 

There on the desk Queen Titania dances, 

Ariel, Oberon come from the Vast. 

All the romances. 

All the fair fancies, 

All at your feet, like a garland are cast. 

i6i 



IZ 



O but they love you, prophet and poet, 

Warrior, patriarch, fairy, and king, 

Hero and hewer, 

Dreamer and doer. 

Come to your beauty, as flowers to the spring; 

Every wise heart of the past is your wooer. 

Suppliant round you they clamour and sing. 

Hero and hewer. 

Dreamer and doer. 

Each to your beauty his homage would bring. 



Lady, fair Lady, haply some morning. 

As you bend over some wonderful scroll, 

You will discover 

Lips of a lover 

Singing a ditty, and craving a dole 

Haply some morning Cupid will hover, 

162 



Stringing his bow and demanding his toll, 

You will discover 

A beautiful lover 

Kissing your lips and besieging your soul. 



163 



Ex Unltate Vires ("Let Us Take Hands"; 

An Ode in Commemoration of the Federation of 
THE South African States 

i 

Let us take hands! 

Our fatherlands 

Were neighbours on the Northern Sea; 

Our cliffs looked out upon your sands, 

Our Thames adjoined your Zuyder Zee; 

Between us now no barrier stands, 

Old comrades and old neighbours we, 

Let us take hands! 

Briton or Boer — ^what matters name? 

Steady of purpose, strong of deed, 

Of Teuton breed 

Our fathers came. 

We are their seed, 

164 



We hold their creed, 
Wc share their fortune, and their fame. 
Akin in blood, and speech, and faith, 
Why should we work each other scathe? 
Wc both are brave, we both are free, 
Shall wc not friends and comrades be? 
Let us take hands! 

ii 

Only a fool 

Would think to rule 

By force of fear, by dint of hate; 

Surely the Lord 

Will break his sword 

Who by a sword would rule a state. 

On every kopje, every hill, 

The flag of freedom is unfurled; 

Here, hand in hand, we must fulfil 

A dual destiny in the world. 

Singly we neither can prevail; 

We twain are kin, 

And both must win, 



i«S 



Or both must fail. 

We both have won; we both have lost, 
With equal shame, at equal cost, 
Let us take hands I 

iii 

Shall not our hearts confederate conspire. 

Shall not our wills be wed in one desire, 

Out of two kindred peoples to create 

One nation wise, and prosperous, and great? 

Let us be friends, 

Working for noble ends. 

Let us be one in spirit and estate! 



IV 

Now that the Oath of Brotherhood we swear. 
Now that our hearts are one, 
The veld which lies so desolate and bare 
Will blossom into cities white and fair, 
And pinnacles will pierce the desert air. 



i66 



And sparkle in the sun. 

Now that the Oath of Brotherhood we swear, 

Now that our hearts are one, 

Surely a land so prodigal and broad 

Will grow a very garden-land of God; 

Surely the realm a realm of love will be. 

Let us take hands 

Whose fatherlands 

Were neighbours by the Northern Sea! 



167 



Girl of the Golden Voice 



Girl of the golden voice — 
Beaten and burnished gold; 
Wisely the gods made choice 
Of such a chalice to hold 
Song to make men rejoice — 
Melody manifold. 

Wisely they set thee apart, 
And gave thee such joy to dole; 
For love is the fount of thine art, 
And love is its final goal. 
Behind thy voice is a Heart, 
And behind thy singing a Soul. 



x6S 



Kmpelopsis (Virginian Creeper) 

I FLAUNT no garden flowers, 
Yet leafy thoughts in rhyme 
Around thy spirits' towers 
Like ampelopsis climb; 
And in the autumnal hours, 
When all the buds are dead, 
Will build thee flaming bowcrt 
With hearts of vermeil red. 



169 



Moons 

(The Pacific Ocean is Supposed to Fill the 
Chasm Made in the Earth When the Moon 
Was Flung Off) 

iEONS ago, when Earth was still a star, 
From his hot heart he tore the Moon away. 
And flung her forth to crumble and decay 
In deserts where no green oases are, — 
^ons ago, but still remains the scar. 
Filled with a briny ocean purple-grey; 
And still the Moon's caprice the tides can sway, 
And still she shines upon him from afar. 

Ev^n so thine anger flung me into space, 
And in the planet of thy mighty heart 
Made a cold chasm for a briny sea; 
Ev'n so thy tides still move in my embrace, 
And tho' we are a million miles apart, 
Ev'n so I still reflect the sun to thee. 
170 



"I Called for Love" 



I CALLED for love; 
And at the name, 
From a black sky 
White lightning came. 

I called for love, 
Then sank abashed: 
From a dumb cloud, 
Wild thunder crashed. 



171 



In Mcmoriam: John Davidson 



We watched thy spirit flickering in the dark, 
Like a phantasmal lark 
Fluttering on the moon; 
We knew thine ire 
Like lightning on a lyre, 
Like thunder in the lily throat of June. 
We saw thy discontent like lambent fire, 
Purple and red, 

Smoking and smouldering beneath the pyre 
Of Beauty widowed, and of Joyance dead, 
Thou with a rapier didst reap the rose 
That on Parnassus grows; 
Thou the white brow of Poesie didst scar, 
Lopping her laurels with a scimitar. 
So strange, so fierce, so various, so bright 
Thy wrath, thy woe, thy melody, thy light. 
172 



11 

Swect-bittcr was thy life, and bitter-sweet, 

Blown with success, and bloody with defeat, 

Beloved by beauty, and oppressed by care. 

Fevered by passion, frozen by despair. 

Thy fervour would not wait 

The seed within the sod. 

The ripening of Fate, 

The harvesting of God. 

Thy zeal to right the wrong 

Both right and wrong down hurled, 

Wert fain by dint of song 

To build a better world. 

iii 

But mortised well, and founded deep. 
The world's divine foundations are; 
The briny tears that mortals weep 
May water lilies on a star. 
And what we sow our souls may reap 
Eternities afar. 



173 



To none our final doom is known, 

As none our primal birth foresaw; 

Yet all things would be overthrown 

By any fault, by any flaw, 

By loosening of a little stone 

In the great Temple of the Law. 

We cannot guess, who cannot see 

Eternity's entelechy; 

And all thy discontent and wrath 

Were but a cobweb in God's path; 

Still moves the Mighty Purpose on 

Through pain to joy, through dusk to dawn. 

iv 

Wert thou a rebel grappling with the stars 
That swing their swords before the Gate of God; 
How clashed and clanged the bolts and bars, 
With hurtling of thy shoulders broad! 
The round sky shuddered, and the sea 
Plangent reverberated thee! 
Nay, but a bird, 

174 



With futile rage, 

Shrilling a tune, 

Upon the moon, 

Bruising thy wings against a cage, 

Or a wild moth. 

Most vainly wroth, 

That war against the world would wage. 



Life took some dust within his hands. 
And made it hear and made it see; 
Love rent thy narrow swaddling bands 
And bore thee over seas and lands 
To the Pisgah of Infinity; 
Yet thou art but putrescent dust, 
Blown in creation's frolic breath — 
The fool of love, the toy of lust, 
The dupe of Death. 
Dust on a bit of spinning slag. 
Belched from the furnace of the sun, 
Wouldst dare to raise a rebel flag 



175 



Against the Wise and Mighty One! 

Why doubtest what he has decreed? 

What man can know 

What He may sow 

Who brings a forest from a seed? 

vi 

So soon or late the fiercest rebel breath 
Is subjugate to Death. 
Although we would escape 
The grisly shape, 
The visage proud and pale, 
The grey forefinger with the purple nail 
Pointing into the darkness, gross and thick, 
Making the senses sick. 
And the courage quail, 
Yet, be we foolish, be we wise, 
Death in the end will look us in the eyes. 
This is the test 
Of triumph or defeat. 
Of worst and best, 
176 



Of bitter and of sweet; 

This is God's arbiter we all must meet. 



Vll 

And yet, perchance, it was this thought, like flame 

Moved thee too soon to call upon Death's name, 

To call upon his might to save or slay; 

When thou with load of glory and of shame, 

With crowns of rankling thorn, and withered bay, 

Thou with half-finished work, half-ripened fame, 

Went forth and cursed and called him, till he came 

In a swirl of surging waves, in a cloud of spray. 

And in the deep 

Gave thy hot sorrow sleep, 

And in his arms carried thy soul away. 

viii 

Who, who will blame thee for thy broken sword. 
Or scorn thee for the discords of thy lyre? 
Thou wert a noble singer, and the Lord, 

177 



For a reward, 

Filled thy wild heart with fire. 

It was not strange the cold world should discord 

With thy desire; 

It was not strange a soul so full of woes 

Should seek repose. 

We blame thee not, thy failures we forget. 

Forget the seeming-weak, the seeming-wrong; 

But in our hearts there blooms and blossoms yet 

The sweet, wild, poignant passion of thy song. 



178 



Queen Alexandra Day 



Mother-Queen, Mother-Queen, 

How has thou heard, how hast thou seen 

Thy people's woe? 

Are there not golden bars between 

The high and low? 

How hast thou heard? How hast thou seen? 

How dost thou know? 

What can our lowly sorrow mean 

To one so high? 

Though thou listen, and though thou lean, 

Down from the sky. 

Thou canst not tell our sorrow and teen, 

Nor hear us sigh. 



179 



11 

Throned afar, 

On a golden star, 

How canst thou guess 

What sore distress, 

And cold, and hunger, and weeping are? 

Were it not better to shut thine eyes 

To things beneath thee, and far-away? 

Why shouldst thou listen for distant sighs? 

'Tis thine to praise, and 'tis theirs to pray; 

Thou art a Queen by the Grace of God, 

And the height is high, and the gulf is broad. 

iii 
Mother-Queen, 
Art mother of all the land; 
Hast heard and seen. 
Canst pity and understand; 
And in thy motherly compassion now, 
We half forget the crown upon thy brow 
And come to thee like children. Queen most fair, 
Mother most wise and good, 
i8o 



These garlands of wild roses everywhere 

Have bound us in the bonds of brotherhood; — 

Hast brought not only to the hungry food 

And solace to Despair, 

Hast made us see that even on a throne 

Pity and Love are beautifully shown, 

And that a queen 

Is ne'er more queenly seen 

Than when she cometh down to comfort care. 

iv 

Thy voice is like the bugle-voice of dawn — 

The orison 

Of many birds and rivers, and thine eyes 

Are like the morning beauty of the skies. 

Love dawns in thee — sunlight, and song, and dew, 

Ideals morning-wise 

And morning-true; 

Love dawns in thee, and hearts of men awake 

To worship Love even for Beauty's sake. 

In every heart thy Love and Beauty stir 

i8i 



Beauty and Love. Thou art the harbinger 
Of charity, and truth. 
Like pinions of an Angel Beautiful 
Rippling the peace of a Bethesda pool, 
To healing of the people is thy hand 
Moving our pity. Mother of the land, 
Because thou lovest thou dost understand. 



182 



"Because Unworthy'' 

Because unworthy, therefore did I rise, 
Wrathful and reckless with my heart on fire, 
Crying, "O foolish Love who would aspire 
To win Earth's truest soul and bluest eyes, 
Some Hope perfidious, some Dream unwise 
Has duped and cozened thee. Now break thy lyre, 
Strangle thine impotent and mad desire, 
And kneel outside the pale of Paradise, 
Because unworthy!" 

But she came forth, most lily-white and fair. 
And took Love by the hand and led him in, 
Saying, "Love comes to solace Love's despair. 
And comfort loneliness, and conquer sin, 
And all my heart's best love thy love will win, 
Because unworthy." 



183 



Rewards 



You who wait on the Lord 
You who pray for a prize, 

You who claim a reward, 

Have you nor ears, nor eyes? 

Have you nor hands, nor feet, 
Have you nor wife, nor son? 

If greater reward be meet, 
What have you said or done, 

To merit a further grace? 

O you have kept from sin! — 
Kept from the tight embrace 

Of the devil's snare and gin. 

Your deeds had a righteous shape, 
Yet they were not done well ; 



184 



You did them but to escape 

From the pangs and the pains of Hell, 

And were ready to leave a wife, 
Or a son, or a friend behind, 

And enter eternal life 

To your own fair soul assigned. 

Not Love, not I^ove was the root 
And the source of your noble deeds: 

Love has its own sweet fruit, 
Never reward it needs. 

Love could never agree 

To the creed you hold as true — 
A hell for such as me, 

A heaven for such as you. 

The hell only I wot 

Is such a creed to hold. 
And such hell is not hot. 

But narrow, and mean, and cold. 



i8s 



Reward ! You have life, and limb, 
You have heart, and brain, and breath, 

And soon when your eyes grow dim 
You will have the repose of death. 

Best let rewards alone, 

Sir Benjamin Pharisee, 
And pray that mercy be shown 

To sinners like you and me. 



i86 



Dreams 

To M. S. 

O DREAMS are sweet, and dreams are swift, 

Divinely bright, divinely dim, 
And dreams are free to dance and drift 

Beyond life's round horizon-rim. 

O dreams are swift, and dreams are sweet. 
And dreams are dim, and dreams are bright, 

Yet braver are the human feet 
That labour up the mountain height. 

And braver is the human heart 

That dares to live its life alone, 
That in a desert dwells apart. 

And makes the loneliness a throne. 



187 



And bravest is the heart that strives 
To kindle other hearts with song, 

And make our mean discordant lives 
Melodious, and free, and strong. 

That makes truth fairer than our dreams, 
That makes our fairest dreams come true; 

Bravest is such a heart, meseems, 
Lady, as beats in you. 



i88 



Lilies 

The solid world of sense dissolves away; 

The forest swoons; the mountains swing and sway; 

The sea becomes a blue amorphous mist, 

Like vapours of a melted amethyst; 

The whole round globe is as a bubble blown ; 

Nothing seems real save your soul alone. 

For through your lucent eyes our dazzled sight 

Espies the glimmer of immortal light; 

And through your eyelid lilies sees enshrined 

The deathless lilies of Eternal Mind, 

And all things seem unreal and true 

Beside the bright apocalypse of you. 



189 



The Joy of Youth 



What dost thou chase? 
A maiden coy! — 
The elusive face 
And heart of Joy I 

ii 

Thou seekest in truth 
A rainbow shed ; 
Thy Joy was Youth 
And Youth is dead. 



190 



Love's Death 

As dumbly as the sunset overhead 
Swoons from its life of amethyst and gold 
Into dark death, thou brokest from our hold 
And died without a mourner by thy bed. 
Not till we felt that something fair had fled, 
Not till we turned to kiss thee as of old, 
Not till our lips in kissing knew thee cold. 
Ah, not till then, Love, knew we thou wert dead. 

When didst thou die? We do not know the hour I 
We had forgotten thee in work and play. 
And like some delicate and fragile flower 
Didst gradually wither day by day, 
Tho' needing only sunshine, and a shower 
Of April tears to save thee from decay. 



191 



Thought 

What is the firemist, but a thought, 
A figment of the fervid brain? 

Without thy thinking it is nought — 
Insensible, inert, inane. 

And though the thought be wise and warm, 
And from its womb a world arise. 

And in the world strange monsters swarm, 
And grow to men with human eyes, 

Still, thought is the creative force; 

And though the forms of thought decay, 
Natheless, the spiritual source, 

Of thinking will not pass away. 

Brain-cells? These too, in thought exist, 
How then can thought on these depend? 

The force of thought will still persist, 
Altho' these things of thought do end, 
192 



"Her Soul" 



Her soul is vague and shallow — 
A thin uncertain stream 

That trickles o'er the fallow, 
Dim deserts of a dream. 

It knows nor nock nor mountain, 
Nor cataract nor pool; 

It bubbles from a fountain. 
And loiters calm and cool. 

It ripples not nor revels, 
But lisps its lazy tunes, 

Along the dusty levels, 
Around the sandy dunes. 

Across the plains of dreaming 
I watch it twist and run — 

A thread of silver gleaming 
In a Sahara sun. 



193 



A Blossom of Flowering Seas 

No spirit brooded on the placid deep, 
Like blind blue eyes awake and yet asleep, 
Like dead blue eyes that neither laugh nor weep, 
The ocean lay. The waves no blossom bore. 
There flowered no foam upon the barren shore. 

Then wondrously and strangely as a star 

Out of a firemist grows, 

I saw a billow blossoming afar 

Into a rose — 

Into the lily, and the rose of thee, 

Thou fairy blossom of the flowerless sea. 

O, as upon the sea I saw thee float. 

Thro' the blue water gleamed thine arms and throat 

Like water-lilies swaying in a mist 

Of lapis lazuli and amethyst, 

194 



And thy face, sweetly blossoming above, 
Lay like a rose upon the breast of Love. 

Then found I all the meaning of the world, 
I saw all nature like a bud unroll; 
From the far nebula I saw unfurled 
The beauty of thy body and thy soul, 
And knew that God's importunate desire 
For beauty had conceived the mist of fire. 
And that a living heart of love must be 
Within the heaving bosom of the sea. 



195 



Love's Immortality 

So sorely wounded, Love, so dark and deep, 

So pitiful his eyes, so full of pain. 

That men lamented, saying he was slain, 

And huddled women bowed their heads to weep. 

Then God was wroth, and made His lightning leap', 

And rolled His loudest thunder to arraign 

A fear so blindly foolishly profane, 

Bewailing Love whom all the angels keep. 

And thou blasphemest, thinking that my heart 
Has lost the love that made it burn and thrill; 
Altho' the first wild rapture may depart, 
The love of loveliness is with me still; 
And love of all the lovely things thou art 
Upholds my courage and inspires my will. 



196 



Song 



Fair Hope that will not die, 

I lay my head at night 

Upon your bosom white, 

And with the dawning light 

Through meadows wet with dew, 

I walk with you, 

Fair Hope that will not die. 

Fair Hope that will not die, 
I would that you were dead, 
For now the leaves are shed 
And darkness overhead, 
A wintry sky; 

I would that you were dead, 
Fair Hope that will not die. 



197 



Love's Youth 



When hair of gold 
Turns hair of grey; 
When joys grow cold 
And fade away; 
Then Loves grow old, 
And Loves decay. 

Nay, there you miss 
Love's meaning high: 
Love is nor kiss 
Nor lover's sigh 
But inmost Bliss 
That cannot die. 

It is a lark! 

On soaring wings, 

Or day or dark 



198 



It ever sings 

— O mortals hark! — 

Immortal things. 

It is the blood 
r the Heart of God: 
It brings the bud 
To Aaron's rod; 
And stirs the mud, 
And stings the clod. 

With songs unsung, 
And tales untold, 
With seeds unflung, 
And buds unrolled, 
Love will be young 
Till God is old! 



199 



"Is There No Hostel by the Way of Life?" 

Is there no hostel by the way of life, 
No place o'ershadowed from the sun and sin 
Of noisy noonday, sheltered from all strife, 
And dust, and din? 

Is there no place where men may, mesh by mesh, 
Sunder their carnate bonds and walk abroad 
Free souls, — no place where they may doff the flesh 
And talk with God? 

Yea, there are holy hostels on our path, 
Where peace, and beauty, and refreshment are, 
Where God thrusts back the world, and cries in wrath, 
"Thus far, thus far." 

Go, watch the lily coming thro' the sod. 
And thou shalt be refreshed as if with wine, 
Supping, as in a hostel with thy God, 
Of food divine. 

200 



Or gaze on Ocean when the twilight lingers 
Over its waves, as young as at their birth, 
When thunderous they trickled thro' God's fingers 
Upon the Earth. 

Or climb a hill. The world is short of breath, 
Thou wilt not find her cloven footprints there, 
And thou wilt recognise as angels, Death, 
And Toil, and Care. 

There stand, a living and discarnatc soul, 
Until the angels drop their dark disguise. 
And show thee, hidden under veil and stole. 
Their wings and eyes. 

Then thou shalt turn thee to thy task as one, 
Who Cometh from a hostel fresh and strong. 
Meeting and greeting dust, and rain, and sun, 
With laugh and song. 

Yea, there are hostels on the path of duty, 
Holy of Holies on the way of Life, 
Where men are comforted by Love and Beauty, 
After their strife. 



201 



A Sea Song 

Her bosom is white as the ocean- foam; 

Her breath is sweet as the ocean breeze; 
And the tide of her beauty will lift me home, 

Over the seas. 

The sails will fill, and the oars will beat, 

And the sun will shine in the cloudless blue. 

For a lady awaits me, fair and sweet, 
And kind and true. 



202 



Starry Eyes 



"Would I might be . . 
Yon host of starry eyes to gaze on thee.' 



Through thine eyes of brown 

Would they gaze, 
Looking boldly down 

Lonely ways. 



Till thy radiant mind, 
Like a rising sun, 

Did eclipse and blind 
Everyone. 



203 



Compensations 



Life laughs and sighs, 
Life gives and takes; 
A Pleasure dies, 
A memory wakes. 

Out of the Night 
Arises Morn; 
When fades the light 
The stars are born. 

Life take a part 
To make a whole. 
And breaks the heart 
To save the soul. 



204 



Light and Darkness 

What radiant eyes, what shining hair, 
What gleaming arms, what flashing teeth! 
Yet only Stygian darkness there 
In the dull soul beneath. 



205 



.Worship 



Work is devout, and service is divine. 

Who stoops to scrub a floor 

May viTorship more 

Than he who kneels before a holy shrine; 

Who crushes stubborn ore 

More worthily adore 

Than he who crushes sacramental wine. 



206 



"The Husk of Life" 

O, THE husk of life your hearts have cast away, 
There is nought between your subtle souls and God; 
And your eyes are bright with the light of a larger day, 
And with wings your shoulders are clad, and your feet 

are shod. 
Mighty Love in your nostrils has breathed, and made 
Your spirits fervid, and faithful, and unafraid. 
Alive with \ life that knows noi: decay, nor death, 
Fed by eternal tides of immortal breath. 



207 



Reckless 



This is the reckless thing I do, 
Simply because her eyes are blue, 
As are the summer skies above her;- 
Merely because her eyes are blue, 
This is the foolish thing I do, 
I love, love, love her. 



208 



Transformation 



The sunbeams beating on thy bosom 
As bouquets of white lilies blossom; 
But where the beams thy lips have wed 
They ripple into roses red. 



209 



Bound 

I BIND thee to me, without sign or sound, 

Beloved one; 
I bind thee to me as the Earth is bound 

Unto the sun. 

Now, with thy budding hopes and April dreams 

Around me roll, 
And evermore my gentle fostering beams 

Will sun thy soul. 

Yea, evermore my silent wordless light 

Shining above, 
Will ripen in thy heart the red and white 

Blossoms of love. 



2IO 



The Chapel 

A Picture 

High-perched upon a purple parapet, 
A saintly sentinel of marble hewn, 
Clearly defined in sable silhouette 
Against the silver of a gibbous moon, 
Fetched out a handless arm as black as jet, 
Calling upon the stars in prayer or threat. 

Within the porch, an angel lying prone 
Pressed her white bosom to a broken cross 
And grizzly Death engraven on a stone; 
Jaundiced and leprous with a lichen floss. 
Leered through a jungle-maze of grass unmown, 
Grinning to see an angel overthrown. 



211 



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